


Strays

by void_star



Series: Winter Sky [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ableism, Agents of SHIELD: Season 1 Compliant, Bad API Documentation, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Central Intelligence Agency, Dead Hydra Agents, Dissociation, Gen, Kittens, Mention of Canonical Rape Threat, Mostly Real Science, PWP (Puppy Without Plot), Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Real Computer Science, Standard Winter Soldier Warning Package, Tactical Cheeto Theft, Very Convincing Technobabble, dumpster diving, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 41
Words: 47,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_star/pseuds/void_star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye continues Clint Barton’s tradition of adopting stray assassins, and makes a friend in the process.<br/>The Winter Soldier is focused on survival, but finds himself developing relationships and a sense of identity.</p>
<p>Features extensively researched psychology, excessive worldbuilding, and gratuitous baby animals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to dirgewithoutmusic (aka ink-splotch), improbabledragon, DexxxtroDNA, Kordalien, and my sister for being awesome betas

“Actually we split up,” said Skye.  “The amount of time Fitz wants to look at old airplanes and the amount of time I want to look at airplanes are _slightly_ different.  That, and there’s an exhibit on the Howling Commandos.” 

“Well, now I wish I’d come with you,” Coulson responded over the phone.  “You know, I came _this_ close to getting my trading cards signed by Captain America.”

“Oh?”  Skye drifted past the shifting images of pre- and post-serum Cap. 

“Loki had terrible timing.”

“Right, that.” Skye wasn’t sure what the appropriate response to someone talking about their own death, past tense, was supposed to be, but changing the subject covered a lot of weird social situations. “This reminds me of reading books about them under the covers; I mean, why sleep when you could be…”

Skye’s brain registered that one of the pictures of Bucky Barnes wasn’t a picture at all. 

_No way._

“Skye?” 

“Um, yeah, can I call you back?”  She looked back and forth between the commemorative plaque and the man staring at it with a lost expression.  She needed an angle to start investigating; somehow, “hi, you’re supposed to be dead, by the way I’m a SHIELD agent but not one of the ones who was secretly Hydra” didn’t seem like the best way to start a conversation. 

Skye caught up to Bucky as he was leaving the exhibit. 

“Hey, so there’s this great coffee place a couple blocks from here,” _Thank you internet,_ “Do you want to go get some?  I’m Skye, by the way.” 

* * *

The soldier (Bucky?) watched his own brain move frustratingly slowly.  The woman in front of him was not a handler, target, or other category he was trained to deal with.  He shuffled through what fragmented memories he had, but nothing useful was turning up and she was still waiting for an answer and he couldn’t manage even a simple interaction, he knew it was simple because he’d seen it happen—

 _Oh._  He’d seen it happen, he could figure out the script from that. 

“Ok.”  He immediately worried that he’d gotten it wrong, that he’d screwed up the script or responded in the wrong language or done something else that he couldn’t even think of. 

“Cool.”  Skye smiled and bounced slightly on the balls of her feet.  The soldier relaxed shoulders he hadn’t realized were tense. 

Skye started walking. The soldier was clearly meant to follow, so he did. 

* * *

As soon as Skye pulled the door open Bucky was hit with a familiar aroma.  It smelled like warmth and bad jokes and men grumbling about being up before the sun. 

_“Good God, Barnes, how many cups are you going to have?”_

_“As many as I need to wake up.”_  

 _Oh._ That’s _what coffee is._  

He’d known the definition but not the significance. 

* * *

Skye kept herself from watching the man-who-might-be-Bucky too obviously while they waited in line. His eyes quickly swept the room, lingering slightly on the exits and several of the customers. Skye looked at those customers, to see if there was a pattern. 

 _Suits. People wearing suits are of tactical interest._   Agents wore suits—FBI, CIA, SHIELD…Hydra.  _Probably not a coincidence that he showed up now, of all times._  

It was probably also good that Coulson hadn’t come, for more reasons than one.  Skye had tried to adopt a number of stray cats during her childhood, with varying success.  The fastest way to scare a cat away was to be too enthusiastic. _Coulson…well. I’ve seen his card collection._

Bucky moved with the same steadiness and calm as May, but his face was deeply wary, and his balanced stance meant he was ready to bolt at a second’s notice.

They reached the register.

“What can I get for you?”

“Large caramel latte.”

“And for you?”

A look of panic crossed Bucky’s face. 

“Um…coffee?”

“What size?”

Panic was joined by bewilderment, so Skye stepped in. 

“Eh, let’s go with large.” She pulled out her credit card and shrugged.  “I figure, since I dragged you here and everything…” 

Bucky nodded minutely, still looking bewildered. 

* * *

The two of them sat down with their drinks.

“Lots of people get overwhelmed by all the choices.  Especially if they don’t go to coffee shops often.”  Skye gave a friendly smile.  Bucky looked at her but didn’t say anything. 

“I ended up using mergesearch to figure out which ones I like best.  That was at a different place, but they had a lot of the same options.” 

Bucky still didn’t say anything.  _Not sure if he’s just not talkative or if he doesn’t want a conversation.  Kinda need to figure that out._  

“What’s merge search?” he asked. 

Skye reminded herself that almost no one actually wanted a full explanation of computer stuff.

“Mergesearch is an algorithm for finding the minimum or maximum in a list of things.  In this case, maximum enjoyment for a list of coffee drinks.” 

Bucky looked thoughtful. “How does it work?”

_Stay calm.  No big deal, just my childhood hero coming back from the dead and asking about my favorite topic._

“It’s kind of hard to explain without an example.”  Skye grabbed a napkin and started tearing it into eight pieces, because binary numbers make everything nice, then wrote a number on each piece.  She mixed up the pieces and lined them up on the table, turning them so they were facing the right way for Bucky.

4  9  11 2  7  3 8  1

“Ok, so, say these numbers represent the tastiness of different drinks.  It’s pretty easy to look and see which number is biggest, but with drinks you’d have to check all of them against each other to figure that out.  Also if you had like a crazy-long list of numbers, like a million, you wouldn’t be able to just look at it and tell.” 

Bucky nodded, so Skye continued. 

“So basically, we’re going to break up the problem into smaller problems until we get one that’s super easy. If we divide this into two lists-“ she scooted the leftmost four pieces and the rightmost four away from each other, 4  9  11  2 and 7 3  8  1, “and we find out the maximum in each list, whichever one is bigger will be the maximum for the whole thing.”  Skye paused. Bucky didn’t look confused, so she forged ahead. 

“Of course, that still leaves the problem of finding _those_ maximums.  So we first look at this list,” 4  9 11  2, “and divide it into two lists,” 4 9 and 11  2. 

“Soooo, we look at the first of _those_ two lists, and it’s only got two numbers in it, so the biggest number is just the larger of the two. So we get nine for this one, and eleven for this one.  And then—this is the cool part—we keep doing that until we get back to the top. So we look at the maximums for our itty-bitty lists, and compare those—eleven is greater than nine, so now we know that eleven is the biggest number in this half of the original list. And then we just do it on the other sub-list thingy and we’re basically done.” 

Bucky stared intently at the napkin pieces for several minutes.  Skye sipped her latte, which had cooled down significantly.

“I understand the individual steps…” Bucky trailed off. 

Skye demonstrated the algorithm a couple more times, then let Bucky do it with help when he got stuck.

* * *

The soldier repeated the procedure, rapidly sliding paper fragments across the table surface. He rolled the word _algorithm_ around in his mind.  It brought images of colossal machinery, stretching floor to ceiling, and a sense of long-term tension. 

_Colossus…_

_The machine was called Colossus._  

He had no idea what that had to do with torn-up napkin pieces. 

“So, you seem like you have that down.” 

The soldier looked up at Skye, his fingers still moving the napkin pieces. 

“I uh, I’m kind of _really_ good with computers. I mean, algorithm design isn’t really my thing, I mostly do hacking, but—what I’m trying to say is, there’s more where that came from.  If you’re interested in learning.” 

The soldier tried to find a script that matched.  His mind stuttered to a halt as he realized she was asking for his decision. She wasn’t scared of him. She wasn’t threatening him. She wasn’t confidently giving orders. 

She was offering a choice.

 _She thinks I’m a person._  

People lived independently of handlers.  People blended into crowds.  People were treated better than weapons. 

“Ok.” 

“Yeah?”  Skye's smile was warmer than anything he had seen on his handlers. 

“Yeah.”  He wasn’t sure if he should smile back, so he didn’t.

He needed to be more than a weapon to survive.  Algorithms and Colossi might be useful. 

* * *

“So what happened at the exhibit?” 

“What do mean, what happened at the exhibit?”  Skye would tell Coulson eventually.  After she figured out exactly what she was dealing with. 

“You said you needed to call me back?” 

“Oh.  That.  Yeah, there was sort of a cute boy situation.”  _Well, technically true_.

Coulson raised his eyebrows.

“Life is short, and I am very single.  Also, there’s like a one hundred percent chance that a random stranger will be an improvement over the _last_ person I was into, soooo…” Skye made a face to express her opinion of Ward. 

“Well, provided said stranger isn’t also secretly Hydra.”  Coulson seemed convinced.  _Also, hello, I think that’s the closest thing you’ve made to joke in weeks_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Colossus Mk. I (and later Mk. II) was an electronic computer built during WWII to help crack the Lorentz Cipher (used by German High Command), allowing the Allies to intercept and read German communications.


	2. Chapter 2

Between training with May, investigating Coulson’s mystery squiggles, and listening to Trip’s theories about Koenig, Skye had very little time for extracurricular research. So far, not much had turned up.

According to the SSR’s files, Sgt. Barnes’ body was not retrieved following his supposed death. According to the U.S. Army’s files, it was not retrieved at the end of the War either, and his grave marker had nothing buried with it. 

SHIELD’s leaked files had nothing to add. 

Hydra’s leaked data had a file for each of the Howling Commandos, evidently written by very sore losers. Apart from attributing the deaths of several key Hydra supporters to assassination by Bucky, nothing differed from the official record. 

_Right. Now for the fun part._

Bucky was still young and hot, implying cryonic preservation, weird medical experiments, alien stuff, or all of the above.  Seemed like a good place to start. 

* * *

The soldier’s hand shook as he put the biography down, mostly unfinished.  The hushed rustling of turning pages and quiet slide of books on and off shelves remained unchanged from when he first entered the library.

He could remember less than a month.  If it were written down like the events in the book, it would take only a handful of sentences.

_Decided not to complete Rogers mission.  Hid for two days to tie up resources that would otherwise be used against Rogers.  Crawled back to Hydra.  Found only handful of agents, not in contact with others; terminated and ran. Went to museum, met Skye._

The book went on for hundreds of pages.  And it wasn’t even complete.  Months, even years were routinely skipped over; periods several times larger than his current life experience were deemed less than nothing. 

The size of what they had taken from him was bigger than he could wrap his mind around.

* * *

He made it through a few more chapters before heading for the nearest window.  The soldier dropped down into the alley behind the library without a sound.  Not that he needed to be quiet; the window had been unlocked for easy access. Right now he just preferred to be a ghost. 

He knew it was real. He only had tiny fragments of memories, but he was absolutely certain that it was real. 

What he didn’t understand was what things he remembered.  The two pictures of Steve Rogers before the serum meant more than the dozen or so of him after.  The only thing he remembered about the missions and battles described was _Jim had an itch on his ankle that day he wouldn’t stop complaining about, and Falsworth complained about Jim’s complaining_. Bucky might have complained to Steve about the two of them. 

He had tried to see if his old pants still had that stupid hole on the pocket, but a security guard yelled at him. 

His associations didn’t make a lot of sense either.  Hearing the sharp bark of “Barnes!  Rogers!” when he read about getting detention was obvious enough, but he had no idea what to make of seeing flames spread over what used to be dinner in response to the paragraph on his second sister’s birth. 

He thought that his mother swore under her breath a lot—usually in Romanian—but he wasn’t sure. The description in the book made her sound too mild for that. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a quiet whining sound.  He looked and found a small puppy, its black and white fur matted with dirt. It was hard to tell, but it seemed too small around the middle. 

The puppy whined again and wrapped its tail around itself. 

* * *

The third time Skye met with Bucky he mentioned that he was thinking of migrating to New York, so they chose an alternate meeting place.  This made commuting to meet him easier—not that Skye could tell him, the location of The Playground being secret and all. 

The fourth time Skye met with Bucky there was a small mass of black and white fluff trailing behind him.

“Awwwww, puppy!” Skye crouched down. “Is it ok if I pet it?”

“She’s not my dog, Ninochka just follows me around demanding food.”  Bucky had a note of irritation in his voice.  “Followed me all the way from DC.” 

“Ninochka? I hate to break it to you,” said Skye, “but once you name the thing you’re _doomed_.”

“What do you mean doomed?” Bucky looked apprehensive. Skye ruffled the fur on Ninochka’s head; Ninochka wagged her tail so hard her entire back end wiggled with it.

“I mean, whether you choose to admit it or not, you’re attached to her.”  Skye grinned.  “Unless some long lost owner shows up to claim her, Ninochka’s totally your dog. Aren’t you?” 

Ninochka continued to wag her tail as Skye continued to pet her. 

* * *

“Um, speaking of names, I don’t think I ever got yours.” 

The soldier was jerked out of contemplating dog ownership by Skye’s question.  _Don’t panic, you already came up with an answer for this_.  He desperately wanted to use his name, wanted to hear people attach it to him, but no one could find out that he knew it. Yakov could plausibly have been invented by an ignorant Winter Soldier.  Yakov was also the Russian equivalent of James, or at least the closest thing to it. 

“Yasha.  My name is Yasha.” 

For some reason the diminutive felt most appropriate. 

He watched Skye’s face carefully.  He caught a hint of something—disbelief, disapproval—and then it was gone.

“Well, nice to meet you officially, Yasha.”  Skye smiled. The soldier let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. 

* * *

Skye was about ninety percent sure that he was lying.  There was a ten percent chance that she was just really disappointed that he hadn’t answered ‘Bucky’. 

They ordered lunch. She tried to teach him about memory and ended up going on a very long tangent about stack attacks. Skye noted with considerable amusement that ‘Yasha’ gave at least a third of his food to Ninochka, who begged shamelessly.  _So doomed._  

* * *

Ninochka followed the soldier as he walked, frequently getting underfoot.  He arrived at the corner of ignored back alley where he had stashed most of his handguns and knives, along with an extra jacket. He sat down and Ninochka flopped beside him. 

_No whining for food?  Does that mean you actually had enough?_   She did look much rounder than before. 

The soldier lifted his right hand and tentatively placed it on the dog’s head, sliding along her spine, like Skye had done earlier.  Ninochka wagged her tail.  Encouraged, he kept stroking her. 

Ninochka crawled into his lap and looked at him like he was the best thing in the universe.

* * *

The soldier was stroking a snoozing puppy when it occurred to him to try researching Hydra again. The first time he’d had no idea how to sift through information and ended up spending hours on transcripts of irrelevant surveillance and detailed data tables for physics experiments he couldn’t understand.  With multiple agencies looking for him, it was not a strategic use of his time.

That, and he had been confused and terrified and even thinking about the Rogers mission made everything hurt.

Now, he knew what Google was. And eavesdropping on conversations gave him an idea of what things to search for first. 

_Pierce said Project Insight would bring peace_.  Everyone else said it was meant to be a massacre. _Corpses are peaceful.  Technically._

His gut twisted.

The Winter Soldier was a precision instrument.  The point of him was to get the job done with as few deaths as possible.  If the ‘twenty million’ figure he heard tossed around was even remotely accurate…

He needed to know. He needed to know _yesterday_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so my goal is to post every Friday; we'll see how that goes.   
> A quick note on technical details: I'm using them in the service of world building and character building, so the amount of comp sci/engineering/science/etc. will vary from chapter to chapter. 
> 
> Stack attacks are a way of hacking a device by tricking it into overwriting some of its memory; Skye being a hacker, she's starting Bucky on the things that she considers to be basic/important, as opposed to a more traditional curriculum that teaches programming first.


	3. Chapter 3

Skye read files on her laptop, making noncommittal noises whenever Hunter sounded like he had finished a sentence. 

Looking through the files that mentioned prisoners, she noticed that Hydra didn’t seem to actually keep prisoners—at least not for very long.  So far, everyone mentioned was either executed or put to use, generally as test subjects or assets.  _I wonder if they include…yup, there’s Mike._ Asset type: Involuntary. Control method: Blackmail—personal safety (self, close family member). 

The clinical description was disturbing but unsurprising. 

Skye continued to quickly skip past all of the obviously-not-Bucky entries when she paused on Agent Sitwell. _What’s he doing in this list?_   She opened his file. 

Asset type: Involuntary. Control method: Karpov persuasion technique. 

Skye stared at the screen.

“So then I told her—wait, are you listening?” 

“What?  Oh.”  Skye had forgotten about Hunter.  “Um, have you heard of the Karpov persuasion technique?  It’s listed as the control method for at least one of Hydra’s involuntary assets.” 

“Alright, you know, you could just tell me you don’t want to hear about my ex-wife.”  Hunter looked slightly offended.  Skye started looking up information on the Karpov technique.

“Does it really matter _why_ someone’s working for Hydra, given that they’re shooting at you?” asked Hunter. 

“ _Yes._ ” 

* * *

The soldier felt like everything beneath his skin had been scraped out, leaving no bones to support him. His feet moved. He was vaguely aware of Ninochka following him.  He wasn’t sure where he was going.  He didn’t care. 

_Pierce was lying._  

He thought he was a tool for protecting people by eliminating threats.  He was supposed to be a tool for protecting people.

_Pierce was lying._  

He didn’t want to know. He had to know. He already knew, really, and had been pretending not to. 

_You said we were making the world safer!  You said—I trusted you!  I trusted…I…_  

Even when he had no idea why, something about working for Hydra got under his skin, but he stuck with it because Pierce said it was the right thing to do.  He endured wipes and upgrades and corrective conditioning because Pierce said it was the right thing to do.  The most efficient way to achieve their goals.

_Pierce’s goals._  

He had thought Pierce was trustworthy.  Pierce had seemed trustworthy.  The soldier had assumed—

The soldier didn’t know why he had assumed Pierce was trustworthy—or why part of him still wanted to believe that it was all a mistake. 

He didn’t want to yell at Pierce, or hurt him.  He wanted to whimper _why_. 

Whimpering was too much effort. 

Walking was too much effort.

Instinct told him there was a park nearby.  He curled up at the base of a tree, metal arm wrapped protectively around his head. Ninochka shoved her little body against him and curled up as well. 

Ninochka was shivering.

_Hate cold_ hate _it cold is not okay Ninochka can’t be cold_. 

“Hey, Nina. Ninochka.  Here.”  He unbuttoned his jacket and stretched the shirt underneath to make space for Ninochka to crawl inside, then redid as many buttons as he could without squishing the puppy.  Her head poked out the collar of his shirt, so he pet her for a while before wrapping his arm around his head again so he could sleep. 

* * *

Skye almost passed May in the hall, then stopped.  

“Hey, have you seen Coulson? There’s something I want to talk to him about.” 

_Here we go._  

“Coulson is buried in a pile of paperwork that’s taller than he is.”  _Not to mention exhausted from writing on a wall all night._   “But I can talk.” 

Skye hesitated very slightly. Coulson was warm; May wasn’t. Most people liked warm.

May usually didn’t care what people liked. 

“I was looking through some of Hydra’s files and I came across this.”  Skye handed May her tablet. 

“This is supposed to be how they control some of their ‘involuntary assets’.  I don’t understand most of the neurobiology technical jargon—but that’s the point.  There’s super fancy neurobiology technical jargon. Kinda can’t help think ‘brainwashing’ when I look at all this…” Skye waved her hand at the screen, “…stuff.”

May nodded.

“I’ll take a look.” _See if it’s worth the risk of sending it to Simmons._  

* * *

Skye still wished she had been able to talk to Coulson, because he was becoming a hermit and she hadn’t seen him in forever. 

The fact that May considered her theory plausible was encouraging.  It also meant that Skye had to wonder just how powerful Hydra’s brainwashing technique was—how far it could push people, whether they could fight back, and so on.  And wondering was all Skye could do, without spending a couple of years studying biology. 

She was becoming increasingly frustrated with Simmons for leaving. 

Skye stopped in her tracks. _Need to look something up._  

Sitwell had been listed as a prisoner because he was held for a few days before Hydra decided whether to brainwash him or hide the body.  _So what if they made a decision immediately?  Or made it before switching to digital files?_  

Any ‘involuntary assets’ who weren’t also listed as ‘prisoners’ would be missing from a search for people captured by Hydra. 

Skye’s brain carefully sidestepped the full implications of this realization and went straight to practical matters.  She would have to pull up a list of all ‘involuntary assets’ and union it with her current list of suspects.  Since she was doing all this on her laptop and the database was _huge_ , it would be worth the time to write a fair amount of code to speed up this specific problem-

_Wait._

_I think I know where to look first._  

_“I thought he was a myth.”  “Guess not.”_

Skye remembered Coulson and May talking in quiet voices about the assassin who shot Director Fury.

A sniper who routinely worked deep behind enemy lines, against overwhelming odds. 

Who had been cryonically preserved since not even Hydra knew when. 


	4. Chapter 4

The soldier woke a little before dawn, but kept lying still because Ninochka was still sleeping. The puppy breathed faster than the soldier, expanding her warm ribcage against his chest. He monitored his environment with sight and sound, but let his sense of touch focus on the feel of little paws pressed into his skin, wet nose touching his neck, fluffy tail twitching occasionally. If he paid attention he could feel her heartbeat; the rhythm was soothing. 

Ninochka stirred a few times as the morning wore on, but otherwise kept napping until children started playing nearby.  She then squirmed out the top of the soldier’s shirt, with more scratching and awkwardness than he thought was necessary.  He glanced at the very stretched-out collar of his t-shirt, while Ninochka bounced away. 

He pushed himself to his feet, adjusted his hat, and tugged at the glove on his metal hand. The puppy was jumping and barking at the child who was furthest away from the rest of the group. The soldier tensed up. If the child perceived Ninochka as a threat and acted to defend himself…

“Puppy!”  The kid bent down to pet Ninochka. 

“Puppy?”  The kid’s friends came over to join him. Ninochka bounced and ran a circle around them, then stayed mostly in one spot as the children crowded around to pet her. 

_They’re not doing anything bad.  They’re not doing anything bad.  They’re not-_

The sound of men talking in Russian caught the soldier’s attention. 

“<I don’t care who he is, that guy’s a problem, bro.>” 

There were six men in matching red tracksuits. 

“<Bro!  You really think taking on an Avenger is worth it?>”

“<He stole my dog, bro! Besides, I read his file. Bro’s got no superpowers.>”

“Hey, bro, what are you looking at?” one of the men said to the soldier, switching to English.

“<Just admiring your outfits.>” _Huh. Skye must be rubbing off on me._

The man’s eyebrows went up. His neighbor nudged him and whispered very audibly, “<Bro, he’s Russian!>” 

“<I see you have good taste.>” The man puffed his chest slightly.

_That’s not what I…never mind._  

“<My name is Ivan; you can call me Vanya.  This is Mikhail, Grigory, Pyotr, Smart Pyotr, and Pavel.>” 

“<Yasha.>”

Vanya laughed and clapped the soldier on the shoulder.  The soldier stood very still to avoid breaking Vanya’s fingers. “<So, what part of Russia are you from?>”  

_Brooklyn._   “<Moscow.>”

“<Sorry, bro, but your accent isn’t quite good enough,>” said Smart Pyotr.  <“I can tell you’re actually from Siberia.>”

* * *

“Mom, can we bring the puppy home with us?” 

Yasha’s head snapped toward the group of playing children.  He strode towards them. 

“Hey!  That’s _my_ dog!” 

Vanya blinked. Yasha sounded just like an American when he spoke English. 

The cogs in Vanya’s head turned while he watched the interaction play out. 

“Sorry, Jason, this puppy already belongs to someone.” 

“I can still play with him, right?” 

“ _Her_ name is Nina, and you can play with her if you’re gentle. Don’t pull her ears, there are lots of nerves in ears.” 

“Jason will be very gentle, won’t you, sweetheart?” 

“YesmomI’llbesupergentle.”

Vanya had an idea. _You’re a genius, bro._  

* * *

“<Hey bro, I think I know how we can get that Avenger.  Follow my lead, bro.>” 

Yasha backed off from the kid playing with his dog but continued to hover nearby.  As Vanya and his friends approached he muttered something about petting fur the wrong way. 

“<Hey bro!>” Vanya got Yasha’s attention. “<You seem cool, bro. Let’s get a drink.>”

“<Bro!  It’s eleven AM, bro.>” said Mikhail.

“<Let’s get coffee. On us, bro.>”

* * *

Skye groaned as she shuffled into the kitchen.  She wasn’t even sure when she went to sleep.  Sometime after four. 

Mack smiled at her.

“Hey Skye, how’s it going with the-“ 

“Coffee.”  Skye walked past him. 

“Ok then.”

Skye grabbed a mug and jabbed a button on the coffee machine. 

PLEASE REFILL BEANS

Skye stared daggers at the insubordinate piece of machinery and slumped toward the cupboard.

Aside from his main file, most of Hydra’s references to the Winter Soldier simply called him ‘The Asset’. Which would be fine, except that searching for the word ‘asset’ brought up every.  Single.  Asset.  SHIELD or Hydra had ever dealt with. 

Skye fumbled the packaging on the coffee beans.  Mack seemed to have taken a hint and wasn’t trying to talk to her while she was still uncaffeinated. 

Skye had spent she-wasn’t-sure-how-long writing a program that searched for files with the word ‘asset’ which were dated to sometime near a recorded defrosting and ranked them according to probability of actually referring to the Winter Soldier.

_At least I’m pretty sure it’s him._   Skye poured beans into the machine.  _If this turns out to be an improbably convincing red herring I might have to strangle someone._

* * *

Free food was free food. At least, that was what the soldier thought a half hour ago.  _I’m already in the middle of an identity crisis and a moral crisis.  I do_ not _need a mooching policy crisis too._

“<…and if we try to confront him, he gets out a bow and arrow.  An actual bow, bro.>” said Vanya.  “<And this bro, he took on those Chitauri bastards, he knows how to use the thing.  Whole situation’s crazy, bro.>” 

Winter killed slowly. The soldier could spend hours crammed into uncomfortable crevices, waiting for a clear shot. He could spend days on infiltration, hiding in shadows, in crowds, waiting for half-minute windows of inattention from guards before moving. 

Current company was wearing through his patience. 

<“That’s where you come in, bro.>”

“<Wait, what?>” Whatever they wanted him to do, it was probably a terrible plan. 

“<You can pass for an American, bro.  If you convince Hawkeye to come with you, he won’t suspect anything!>” said Vanya.

“<Meanwhile we set up an ambush, bro.>” said Grigory. 

“<Bro, that’s genius!>” said Not-Smart Pyotr. 

_Wait, what?_  

“<You’re asking me to help you kill him?>” 

“<Yeah, bro. What do you say?>”

The soldier just stared at Vanya. 

“<I told you, bro,>” Pavel spoke up.  “<Getting your hands dirty is a scary idea for people who are inexperienced.>”

_Wait,_ what _?_

“<Excuse me?>” the soldier said icily. 

Pavel shrugged. “<If you don’t have the nerves for it, you’ll just be a liability, bro.>” 

* * *

Something about Yasha shifted, and he suddenly went from naïve young man to cold-blooded predator.

“<I can think of about a dozen better ways of killing him off the top of my head,>” said Yasha, “<Because you can only plan so much without information about the target.>”

Pavel let himself smile. Yasha was going to be even more useful than expected. 

* * *

“<So you’ll do it.>”

“<No.>” The soldier used his favorite word with distinct satisfaction.  He stood up and started to leave. 

“<He stole my dog, bro!>” said Vanya.  “<What happens when he comes for Nina?>” 

The soldier stopped in his tracks. 

“<Bro, we’ll pay you.>” said Pavel. 

The soldier glanced back at them. 

“<I’ll get your dog back. Anything else will require further consideration.>” 

_There is no way in hell I’m killing someone without doing my own research first._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: there are of course Americans who don't have American accents, Vanya just isn't one for precision or subtlety.  
> Since the MCU contains so little Hawkeye, I am supplementing with stuff from the comics. The Tracksuit Bros are a recurring enemy.  
> And yes, they really say "bro" that much. I'm just trying to write them according to their canon speech patterns.


	5. Chapter 5

Skye was supposed to meet with Yasha in an hour, and she still wasn’t sure how to handle that interaction. 

She was now certain that Yasha was the Winter Soldier was Bucky; once she made the connection, lots of little details fit into place.  The glove on his left hand to hide the metal prosthetic, the fact that ‘Yakov’ was equivalent to ‘Jacob’ or ‘James’, the time he asked her if her laptop was like a tiny Colossus Mk. II, and so on. 

Skye _might_ have spent longer than necessary reading about computing devices from World War II.  Cryptology was cool. 

The problem was, after reading everything she could find about him, Skye was even more confused about his current mental state.  Standard protocol for the Winter Soldier said to use the Karpov technique every time he was taken out of cryo, even though the technique was usually used once per involuntary asset.  Protocol also mentioned ‘unique neurological features’ before devolving into indecipherable technical language, though she was pretty sure she knew what ‘psychologically unstable’ and ‘unpredictable behavior’ meant. 

All of which meant that she didn’t know how to talk about anything important without scaring him off.

_I’ll improvise something._   She had spent most of her childhood faking her way through social interactions she didn’t fully understand; this was nothing new. 

* * *

The soldier arrived fifteen minutes early for lunch and sat waiting for Skye, as usual. 

He was seriously considering not dealing with the dog-stealing archer.  The past week had been miserable. 

Someone tried to mug him, and when he tackled the idiot he suddenly saw steel and fire and friend _oh God that’s my friend_. His nightmares turned sharply worse after that.  Ninochka frequently woke him up by barking, which half the time made him panic more before curling around her and stroking her as gently as he could. 

At least dogs didn’t care about crying. 

When he finally made himself look up the target, he found out that ‘fought those Chitauri bastards’ translated to ‘saved the world’.  Looking up video footage caused an adrenaline spike and difficulty breathing. Because nightmares about Steve weren’t enough, he started having nightmares about flying alien whale things as well. 

He still felt empty and betrayed because of Pierce’s lies; he tried to distract himself with surveillance. Said surveillance revealed that Clint Barton was a better dog owner than the soldier, that he had a younger archer friend who visited regularly, that everyone in the apartment building liked him, and that he was inordinately fond of the color purple. The dog appeared to be very happy with its thief.  This made the soldier wonder why he had taken a side before doing research, which reminded him of the situation with Pierce and Hydra, which sent back into a spiral of guilt and misery. 

And on top of all that, he had a growing collection of fleabites from sleeping with Ninochka inside his shirt. 

* * *

Skye saw Yasha’s face light up as she approached.  He stopped smiling almost immediately, switching to a more neutral expression.

_He’s extremely guarded—with good reason—but he’s genuinely happy to see me._ Given that this was the first time Skye had seen him smile, it was meaningful as more than just psychological data. 

* * *

“Isn’t that one of Coulson’s agents?” 

“Checking facial recognition and…yes.  Yes she is.”

* * *

The soldier felt much better by the end of lunch.  As he watched Skye walk away, he noticed three men cross the street with a purposeful gait and go around the same corner as her. 

The soldier followed.

* * *

Skye went to cut through an alleyway and suddenly found herself surrounded.  Five men pointed guns at her, two in front and three behind. 

_If they’re even halfway competent I can’t take them all at once._ Skye moved her hand slowly toward her pocket to call May. 

“Hands where we can see them. Or we send you back to Coulson in a body bag.” 

One of the men in front of her pulled out handcuffs.  “Turn around.” 

Skye started running scenarios in her head.  Most of them involved waiting for a distraction. 

One of the men blocking the entrance to the alleyway was suddenly flattened by a surprise Yasha.

_Did he just jump off a roof?_  

_…did he just break that guy’s neck with his feet?_  

_Ohhh yeah, distraction._  

Skye turned and disarmed one of the men behind her, dislodging his kneecap with her heel.  He slumped to the ground in pain.  His partner turned toward Skye just as she pointed the gun at him. 

Finished with the other three, Yasha launched himself past her.  He broke the distracted agent’s wrist and silenced the resulting scream with a strike to the throat. 

“You think you’ve won, huh?” The man Skye disarmed gasped in pain between sentences.  “Hydra will come for you.” 

The color drained from Yasha’s face. 

“Just a matter of time, before—“ 

Yasha killed both Hydra agents with a brutally efficient whirl of motion.  Skye made no move to stop him.  The other three agents were already crumpled on the ground; she didn’t need to check for pulses to guess that they were dead.

Skye and Yasha stared at each other in awkward silence for a moment. 

“We should, um, check for forensic evidence and then get out of here.”  Yasha started scanning the ground.  “Did you touch anything?” 

“Just this.” Skye removed the clip and chambered round from the gun. 

Yasha nodded, and crouched down to examine a section of ground more closely.  Skye put the gun in her purse. 

“So…I guess we have some things to talk about,” she said. 

* * *

The soldier picked up a hair off the ground, long enough to be Skye’s. 

He had no idea how to handle this situation.  The plan had been to just not do anything suspicious around Skye.  In retrospect, this was a really naïve plan.

He found one of his hairs stuck to the jacket of one of the men.  The rest of the area was clear.  DNA evidence collected, he started walking.  Skye followed. 

_Dammit, dammit, dammit, I need a plausible explanation for my combat skills—_

“Um, maybe we should choose a different place to meet next time,” said Skye. 

“I’m CIA,” the soldier blurted out.  _Wow,_ real _smooth. Top notch undercover agent, right here._

“Wasn’t going to ask, actually, but while we’re at it—I’m SHIELD.  Got my badge the day before everything went up in flames.”

The soldier slowed his walk and turned to look at Skye. 

“After that, well—Hydra still has a lot of operations running, and we’re the best equipped to stop them. The best equipped to break their control over involuntary assets.” 

The soldier froze.

Mixed up emotions refused to solidify into anything coherent, so he said nothing. 

“So, I guess, if you know any…um.  I know you’re not actually CIA.” 

_No._

_She’s not supposed to know she can’t know—_

Skye needed to think he was a person, if she found out he wasn’t—

“Yasha?” 

_Can’t breathe-_

“Are you okay?”

_Can’t-_

_Need to get out of here-_

Trying to run away would only get him in more trouble. 

“Crap, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.” 

Skye’s words did not compute.

The soldier gradually regained control over his breathing.  He noticed Skye looking at her phone. 

“Okay, I found a thing about how to help someone having a panic attack.”  She looked up.  “Oh. I guess you’re—yeah. You okay?” 

There was a softness to Skye’s voice that he didn’t know how to interpret. 

He didn’t know what answer he was supposed to give, so he said nothing. 

After a couple minutes of silence Skye started typing on her phone again. 

“Here.  This restaurant has good reviews.  Also croissants.  Meet there next week?”  Skye held out her phone so he could see.  He memorized the address and nodded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a tumblr! http://voidstarfanfic.tumblr.com  
> A note about warnings: I'm new at this. I know that violence, sexual assault, and self-harm/suicide are things which should be warned for, so if they come up I'll put a brief note at the beginning of the relevant chapter. If there's anything else I should be covering just let me know.


	6. Chapter 6

“Can I pet your dog?”

The soldier was startled out of his thoughts.  He looked up to see Clint Barton, purported dog thief.  A probability calculation for running into a particular person in a large city and a fear that Barton would do something bad to Ninochka both ran through his head. 

“Wait, hang on…Puedo acariciar a tu perro?” said Barton. “Okay, um, puis-je caresser votre chien?  Mogu li ya pogladit' svoyu sobaku? Qʻn’n ‘yk lyblyng-”

“You can pet her if you’re very, very gentle.” 

Barton smiled. The soldier watched him suspiciously. 

Barton seemed to be sufficiently gentle, and Ninochka was enjoying herself. 

“What breed is she, border collie?” 

“Um…I found her behind a library?” 

Instead of being disappointed by the lack of information, Barton just smiled wider.  

“That’s great that you’re taking care of her.  You should get her fixed, if you haven’t already.” 

The soldier scooped up Ninochka and scowled.  “She isn’t broken.”

“That’s not what…oh boy. Time for every parent’s favorite conversation, canine edition.” 

A long discussion of surgery and litter sizes later, and the two of them ended up in Barton’s apartment. At least now the soldier had an idea of how they had run into each other; he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was walking, and autopilot had taken him to his surveillance spot across the street. 

“Hey Lucky!” A large, light brown dog came over to Barton.  “Who’s a good boy?”

Ninochka squirmed to indicate that she wanted down and trotted over to Lucky.  They promptly got into what could only be described as a sniffing competition. 

“How did you get your dog?” asked the soldier. 

“Long story short, I fed him pizza, he decided he liked me, his previous owners attacked me because…because longer story, Lucky bit one of them to defend me and then his old owners threw him into traffic.” 

The soldier stared at Barton. He knew it made sense; the dog didn’t just disobey his owners, he outright attacked them.  Of course they punished him. 

The soldier decided that he was never going to be a sensible owner for Ninochka. 

He also decided to never let Lucky go back to his old owners. 

“I’m assuming Ninochka is your first dog?” 

“I…think so?”

“There’s some stuff you should know…” 

* * *

Natasha’s phone beeped. She checked to see if the text was from someone she cared about. 

Less than a minute later she was texting Steve. 

* * *

“Sam Sam Sam we need to get plane tickets _now_.”

* * *

The soldier pulled a matted rectangle of dirty fur out of his newly acquired dog brush. Ninochka’s coat was already looking much better, though he worried that too much fur was coming out; this was the third time he’d had to clean the brush. 

Ninochka, on the other hand, was completely unconcerned and wagged her tail happily. 

* * *

Skye decided to slow down with her interactions with Yasha, considering how much he freaked out last time they met. 

Though that wasn’t to say she couldn’t keep making progress on helping him. 

Like with Mike, Hydra had installed a remotely activated killswitch in the Winter Soldier. Unlike with Mike, Hydra also installed backup killswitches.  Plus trackers.

In other news, Skye wanted to strangle whoever was in charge of the filing system—or rather lack thereof—for information on the Winter Soldier.  Finding records of a few implants being installed was easy. Being sure she had found all of them was nearly impossible. 

Then again, hacking the NSA from a laptop was nearly impossible, and she could do that in an hour.

* * *

Ninochka whined.

“I’m sorry, I can’t pet you until tomorrow because of the flea medicine.  It will kill all your fleas, though, and then you won’t have to scratch yourself so much.” 

Ninochka whined again.

* * *

Skye reread the paragraph she had just gone over about a killswitch integrated with the Winter Soldier’s arm.  It didn’t say explicitly, but it sounded like the mechanism was software controlled. As in, hackable. She started skimming the rest of the file. 

_Oh, hello, it even tells me where to find the API documentation. Finally, some usable information._ A few clicks and she brought up the documentation. 

Архитектура ARM обладает следующими особенностями RISC:

  *                 Архитектура загрузки/хранения
  *                 Нет поддержки нелинейного (не выровненного по словам) доступа к памяти (теперь поддерживается в процессорах ARMv6 за некоторыми исключениями и полностью в ARMv7)
  *                 Равномерный 16х32-битный регистровый файл
  *                 Фиксированная длина команд (32 бита) для упрощения декодирования за счет снижения плотности кода. Позднее режим Thumb повысил плотность кода.
  *                 Одноцикловое исполнение



 

 

Skye stared at the screen. 

_You’re kidding me._

* * *

The soldier ran, Ninochka close behind.  According to the Internet, border collies were energetic and needed lots of exercise. Running in circles around the park counted as exercise.  He ran slower than his top speed so she could keep up; still, Ninochka was remarkably fast for being so small. 

He stopped running to look at a passerby.  For several seconds he wasn’t sure why she had caught his attention. 

Ninochka caught up to him and started tugging on the hem of his pants with her teeth, declaring victory in their game of tag. 

The girl had red hair pulled into a messy bun and pink tights tucked into her sneakers.  The soft fabric bag she was carrying showed the shape of its contents, though he couldn’t remember what that shape was—

_Pointe shoes.  The toe keeps its shape even when the dancer takes them off._  

Twirling motion and a mischievous smirk flashed through his mind. 

_“Want to see how many people I can become?”_

_“I’m at the top of the class in English.  The teacher says he’s never seen someone advance so quickly in conversational skill.”_

_“Boost me up so I can reach that window.”_

_“Well, I have to call you something.  How about Alyosha?”_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The languages Clint asks to pet Nina in are Spanish, French, Russian, and Yiddish (cut off). 
> 
> Russian text was taken from the Wikipedia article on Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) Architecture, Функции RISC (RISC functions) section. Because puns.   
> Incidentally, this means that Bucky's arm has the same instruction set architecture as your phone. (Probably. ARM is by far the most common ISA for mobile devices.)


	7. Chapter 7

“Okay, we’ve narrowed the search area a lot, but it’s still a big city, and Bucky might be actively avoiding—“ 

Steve was interrupted by a knock on the door.  He walked over to answer it while Sam folded up their map. 

A man and a woman in inexpensive but tidy suits were waiting in the hall. 

“Captain Rogers? I’m Agent Chang, with the CIA, and this is Agent Jepsen.  We have reason to believe you are in danger,” said the man. 

Steve blinked. He probably should have expected a visit like this, but he had been very…focused, recently.

“Oh, um, that’s—would you like to come in?  I think I have coffee…” 

Agent Chang said, “Oh, you don’t need to-“ and Agent Jepsen said “Coffee sounds lovely” at the same time, before cutting themselves off and glancing at each other.  Steve held the door open wider and they awkwardly filed past him. 

“Agents Chang and Jepsen, CIA.”  Steve gestured at them, then nodded at Sam.  “Sam Wilson, Fifty-eighth Pararescue Squadron.” 

Polite introductions over, Steve headed for the cupboard.  “I assume this is about Hydra?” 

“More specifically, about the Winter Soldier.  We believe he may come after you again.” 

Steve glanced over his shoulder at Agent Chang’s words, but kept most of his emotion off his face.

“You know, I’ve talked to several neurologists about the procedures listed in his file.  Not sure you can really say someone’s Hydra when they had to be literally brainwashed before they complied.” 

“We’re not here to have philosophical arguments about guilt,” said Chang. 

“We’re here to make sure a national hero doesn’t get killed,” said Jepsen. 

Steve didn’t think he could argue with that logic without telling them more than he cared to about Bucky.

“Out of coffee, though I do have orange juice.” He held up the empty container.  “So what’s the plan?  For the Winter Soldier, not the beverage situation.”

“We’re assigning you a protective detail, while we continue our search for him,” said Chang. “According to his file, target assignment involves programming him to believe you are a threat that can’t be ignored.” 

“Meaning,” said Jepsen, “that even if he loses contact with Hydra, he’ll still try to finish his mission.”

_Except he didn’t._   Steve kept his mouth shut.  If he needed to intervene on Bucky’s behalf, it would be more likely to work if they suspected nothing. 

“We’ll inform you when we have him in custody,” said Chang.  “At which point we can discuss ethics and guilt for as long as you want.”

“Seeing as you’re the victim most people are upset about, you should get input before someone else tries to avenge you,” said Jepsen. 

Steve made himself smile pleasantly.  “Anything I should know about the protective detail?” 

* * *

Jepsen and her partner got into the car.  

“You get the impression that he’s hiding something?” said Chang. 

_Oh good, I thought it was just me._   “Yep.” 

“Greeaaat. This should be fun.”

* * *

“So then it finds the data at that address, and loads it into a register…” 

The soldier tried to grasp at memories that kept slipping away.  He knew the dancer with red hair was important, knew there was more information in his head—

The smell of ozone and buzz of electricity blocked out everything else as a metal vice circled down toward—

“Yasha?” 

His head had never been cooperative.  Glimpses of delight, admiration, protective instinct, and helplessness danced just beyond his reach. 

 “Um, Earth to Yasha.” 

He suddenly remembered Skye sitting in front of him.  _Oh, right.  I told her my name was Yasha._  

_How did I end up with so many names?_  

“You okay?” asked Skye.

“Yes?”  The soldier was pretty sure that was the right response. 

“Okay, just wanted to make sure, after—I know last time wasn’t the most fun.” 

He didn’t know if he was supposed to respond to that, but he did have a question. 

“How did you know I wasn’t actually CIA?”  _Is that all you know?_  

Skye’s shoulders settled as she exhaled.  “You know all those files that got dumped on the Internet?  You kinda match one of the people described in one of them.”

The soldier’s heart rate sped up.  _Calm down.  Whatever she knows, it didn’t make her leave or get mad_. 

“Hey, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to turn you in or anything.” 

His thoughts were foggy and disorganized. The one thing he was able to pin down was that she didn’t know what he was, or she would be mad that he pretended to be a person.  It would be easier to keep it that way if he knew who to impersonate. 

“Who—um, whose description do I match?” 

Skye glanced around without moving her head, then spoke softly. 

“The Winter Soldier.”

* * *

Skye saw the fear on Yasha’s face and cringed internally.  She had been explicitly trying not to scare him again, and she’d failed.

“Are you going to punish me now?”

“What?” Skye sputtered. “Why would I punish you?”

“I pretended to be a person so you would keep being nice to me.” 

Skye opened her mouth to respond but no words came out.  There were so many things wrong with that sentence it hurt. 

“What are you if you aren’t a person?” she finally managed. 

“A weapon.”

Skye’s brain refused to process the concept of nonpersonhood.  Sure, the files had referred to the Soldier as a weapon, but she thought that just meant a person who was dangerous. 

Convincing him that he was a person might take a while though, and she needed to make something clear _now_. 

“I don’t care how Hydra classified you.  I’m going to keep being nice to you, and bullshit semantics can’t stop me.” 

* * *

Mike Peterson answered his phone. “Ace, be quiet for a minute—hello?” 

“Hey Mike, it’s Skye. Is this a good time?”

“Yeah, just let me step into another room.  What’s up?”

Mike listened while Skye explained the situation. 

“Yeah, I can talk to him. One thing though: make sure he knows he doesn’t have to do this.” 

“Um, okay,” said Skye.

“That’s important. After being forced to do things—and after having orders disguised as suggestions—knowing that you can refuse, even with something you want to do, is really important.” 


	8. Chapter 8

“I probably shouldn’t ditch the protective detail just to see how hard it is, should I?”

Given that Sam had volunteered for a program involving an experimental flying device and active war zones, it said something that Steve managed to be more reckless than him. “Probably not.”

Sam tried to ignore Steve’s restless pacing.  It didn’t work. 

“What if he tries to find me? And he can’t get near me because of the protective detail?” 

“I believe that is the point of the protective detail.” 

“I’m being serious,” said Steve. 

“So am I.  I know last time he didn’t—”  Sam exhaled.  “Steve. We both read his file. Considering how much they messed with his brain— even if they haven’t reset his programming yet, we still can’t act on the assumption that he’s sane.” 

Steve made a wounded puppy face.  “We have to find him.”

“Yeah, I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s smart to let him find us.” 

Steve looked miserable, and Sam didn’t blame him.  Anytime he tried to imagine how he’d feel if it were Riley in Bucky’s position, his brain shorted out in self-defense. 

“Hey, you talked to that private detective Maria recommended, right?  I’m sure she’ll turn something up,” said Sam. 

* * *

“This isn’t a fair arrangement.” 

Skye wasn’t sure what to make of Yasha’s abrupt statement.  “How so?”

“I’m learning a new skill. And getting food. You should learn a new skill too.”

Skye had been worried that he was going to stop meeting with her.  She smiled. 

“Okay.  You have a particular skill in mind?”

“I’m very good at killing people.  Also related skills like tracking and infiltration,” said Yasha.  “I can speak several languages, and my boss says I’m decent at sewing.”

_Wait, what?_  

“Your boss?” asked Skye.

Yasha sat up straighter. “I fix stuff at a dry cleaner’s. I heard the owner say she doesn’t think I’m ‘all there’, but otherwise she suspects nothing.” 

Skye wanted to glare at Yasha’s boss, but she kept her face pleasant. 

“We should probably start with close quarters combat, in case you get attacked again.”

“Right, that.” Skye still hadn’t told anyone about that; she wasn’t sure how to explain the situation without mentioning Yasha, and she didn’t know how people would react if she explained him. Until they had a more stable friendship, it was probably better to keep unknown variables to a minimum.

“I’m actually already learning that from May, I just haven’t gotten super good at it yet,” she said.

“Oh.  Empty-hand and weapons?” 

“Yes.” 

“Improvised weapons?”

“Yes.” 

“Striking and grappling?”

“More striking, less grappling.” 

“I can teach you Sambo. Shooting?” 

“Yes.” 

“Including sniping?”

_Oh. Oh wow._  

“I have not learned sniping.”

“I can teach you that. How much do you know about projectile physics?” 

“I took _part_ of a physics class before dropping out of highschool.”

“We’ll start with that then.”

_Ohmygod I’m learning how to be a sniper from Bucky Barnes._   

* * *

Skye looked really happy—she was bouncing slightly and making small motions with her hands—so the soldier must have done something right. 

After Skye said—after last time, he decided to try to make Skye happy. 

Usually when he tried to make people happier it was to protect himself.  This was different. 

“Oh, hey, I wanted to ask you something,” said Skye, still beaming.  “I have this friend Mike, who was in…a similar situation to yours. And I was thinking—if you want, it’s totally fine if you don’t—it might be nice to talk to someone with similar life experience.” 

The soldier had no idea what Mike was like, but his first instinct was to assume that new people were threats. 

Skye seemed to think it was a good idea. 

“You said that I get to decide?” 

“Yeah, one hundred percent your decision.  No bad consequences either way.” 

He didn’t have a lot of practice making complicated decisions yet. 

“I don’t know?”

“Okay, that’s fine. You can always figure it out later,” said Skye.  “So, should we work on physics or ISA’s first?” 

* * *

Ninochka continued to beg for food until Yasha showed her his empty plate.  Convincing him that she didn’t belong in his lap during meals—and that she definitely didn’t belong on the table—had taken a while.

“Why did you decide to teach me things?” asked Yasha. 

Skye thought for a moment.

“A couple reasons. At this point it’s because I like you and I enjoy our meetings.  Earlier on…I don’t hang out with other computer people very often. Most people don’t want to hear the details of _how_ I did a hack, they just want to know what info they now have.  Which is fair, there are plenty of things I don’t want to hear the details of—but it’s really nice, being able to geek out about stuff without getting weird looks.” 

Skye considered whether to give all her reasons.  _Eh, why not._  

“That, and I wanted to know why you look just like Bucky Barnes.” 

“No I don’t.” Yasha looked at her for a moment, then broke eye contact. 

“Um, yeah, you kinda do,” said Skye. 

“No,” said Yasha, shaking his head.  He bent over to pet Ninochka, still avoiding eye contact. 

_Oooookay. Not the response I was expecting._

“Yasha,” Skye started, “I saw you at the Howling Commandos exhibit.  Next to a picture of Bucky Barnes.” 

Yasha looked at her with a panicked expression.  _Wait, crap, I pushed on it too hard…_  

“They don’t—they can’t—“ He leaned forward and whispered. “If they find out I know, they’ll wipe me, they’ll take it away-” 

He gasped for breath.

“They told me- they told me to kill S—I didn’t _remember_ —I…”

Instinct told Skye to pull him into a hug; intellect told her that unauthorized touching might make things worse. 

She made herself sit still.

“I won’t tell anyone. Yasha, I promise I won’t tell anyone.” 

His breathing started to slow down, but she noticed that his right hand was still shaking.

They sat for several minutes without moving or speaking. 

“Do you—um, do you want a hug?” 

_I think that’s a neutral way of phrasing it._  

“…I don’t know.”

* * *

“There is one more thing. One of our teams was killed—ostensibly by one of Coulson’s agents, a hacker, when they should have had the element of surprise.  So either she got really lucky, or—” 

“Coulson is more of a threat than we thought; might even be the one running SHIELD.  Have someone investigate the incident.  More importantly, devote more resources to our talent search. We need to keep an eye out for any useful assets.” 

“Consider it done. Hail Hydra.” 

“Hail Hydra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skye is really good at this whole not scaring Bucky thing. 
> 
> Sambo is a Russian martial art (derived from judo and various types of wrestling, so, very grappling-heavy) developed in the USSR. 
> 
> Instruction set architectures (ISA) are specifications for what assembly language instructions need to be supported by the hardware. So, you've got the thing the programmer wants the computer to do, which exists as fuzzy human thoughts, which they write up in some programming language or other, which doesn't look like English but still has lots of recognizable words mixed in (this is what people usually mean when they say 'code'). This program is then compiled into whatever assembly language is used by the device you want to run it on (so if you compile it for a laptop with x86 architecture, it will run on any x86 device, but if you then want to run it on an ARM device you have to recompile your code).   
> (Compilers are really neat and *really* complicated; you can think of them as magic boxes that translate programming language A into assembly language B. They were invented by Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, allowing programmers everywhere to write their programs *once*, in a comprehensible language, instead of learning the assembly language for every type of device they want their program to run on.)   
> Then the assembly language instructions are executed using transistors and logic gates and voltages and things transition into electrical engineering and chemistry and physics. 
> 
> When you're shooting something nearby you can more or less point and pull the trigger, but when you're shooting something a mile away things like gravity and wind have a noticeable affect on where the bullet goes. Hence real-world snipers have to practice the relevant mathematics as part of their training.


	9. Chapter 9

“It was a shortcut,” said Steve.  “Or at least it was in 1942, before someone stuck a building in the way.” 

“Which is why we had to do a bit of improvisational navigation,” Sam added helpfully. 

“I see,” said a rather irritated Agent Chang. 

Agent Jepsen looked like she was trying not to laugh as she took notes. 

Steve kept a straight face until he and Sam made it to the stairwell of Clint’s apartment building.

“Shortcut, huh?” said Sam.

“It really was a shortcut,” said Steve, grinning.  “The improvisational navigation that followed was just a little faster and more convoluted than strictly necessary.” 

* * *

Sam and Steve sat down while Clint pulled leftover pizza out of the microwave. 

“Want some?”

“I’m good,” said Steve.

“We had a big lunch,” said Sam. 

Clint shrugged and sat down with his plate.  He started munching. 

“So, you saw Bucky?”

“Yeah,” said Clint through a mouthful of pizza.  “Didn’t recognize him until we got to my apartment and he took off his hat.”

“Um, when he got to your apartment?” asked Steve. 

“Oh, yeah. I asked if I could pet his dog, and then we started talking.  He was new at the whole having a pet thing, so I figured I’d give him some tips, you know?” 

“He has a dog?” asked Steve.

“Yeah, a puppy, maybe four or five weeks old?  Coat was dirty but she was very well fed.  Anyway, he clearly cared about her a lot.” 

“So you started talking to a stranger about dogs and he turned out to be Bucky?” asked Sam.

“Pretty much,” said Clint.

“How was he?” asked Steve. “I mean, was he well fed too? Was he injured? Do you know if he got away from Hydra?” 

“He wasn’t noticeably underfed, though it did look like his left arm was bigger than his right arm. Didn’t seem injured. As for Hydra…it’s not like it came up in conversation, but according to Natasha the dog is a good sign. Weapons aren’t usually given pets.” 

Steve broke a little bit inside at the mention of Bucky as a weapon. 

“How did he seem psychologically?” asked Sam. 

“Hard to say. He didn’t look he’d been getting much sleep.  He was suspicious of me, though it doesn’t really count as paranoia when people actually are out to get you.  He paid attention when I talked about how to take care of dogs.”  Clint considered for a moment.  “Oh!  He was upset by animal cruelty.” 

“Animal cruelty?”

“Yeah, I told him the story of how I got Lucky.”  Clint jerked his head toward the dog.  “Lucky’s old owners are jerks.” 

Sam’s face twitched.

“Nothing?  Huh.  Natasha would be making a joke right about now,” said Clint. 

Steve had the distinct impression that he was missing something.  He reviewed Clint’s words for possible double entendres—

“Too many years trying to keep a straight face for propaganda reasons while in the presence of bored soldiers,” Steve deadpanned.  “Guess my brain just filters certain things out now.” 

Given that the other Howling Commandos—mostly Bucky and Jim—intentionally spoke in double entendres and bad inside jokes whenever Steve needed to be professional, mental filtering was necessary. 

* * *

“Oh.  Oh Nina.”  The soldier stared at the very happy, very muddy puppy in front of him. Ninochka wagged her tail, flinging off bits of mud. 

“Okay, let’s get you cleaned up.” 

* * *

“What do mean, you _lost track_ of him?” said Agent Bryan. 

Chang focused on breathing until some of his frustration subsided.  “Sir.  I am almost certain that he lost us on purpose.” 

Bryan gave his best government-approved unimpressed face. 

“So _Captain America_ , national hero and model citizen, decided to deliberately break protocol and endanger his own life for kicks and giggles.  Uh-huh.”

_See, this is why I want a promotion.  So I don’t have to answer to idiots._  

“Do I need to remind you why we’re doing this?  The world’s deadliest assassin is at large, and could be doing untold amounts of damage.”

* * *

The soldier finished picking the lock on the door to the gym.  Ninochka barked. 

“Shhhhhh.  We’re sneaking.” 

Ninochka was quiet, though the soldier wasn’t sure if she understood or not.  He picked her up so she wouldn’t leave muddy footprints and crept inside.  He made his way to the showers. 

* * *

“This guy slips through high security areas like it’s nothing.  Nuclear missile silos, government buildings, secret test facilities—our own headquarters. He’s done over two dozen assassinations and _for decades_ we couldn’t even prove that he existed.” 

* * *

“Stay.  Good.  Wait, get back over there.” 

Ninochka wandered out of the shower stall where the soldier had put her.  He sighed and continued undressing.  His jacket would need washing, but he was trying to keep the rest of his clothes dry. 

_Now I have to wash the floor too._  

“Come on Ninochka.” He scooped her up and turned on the water.  When it was warm he climbed in. 

* * *

“As for motive, he’s either working for Hydra or he’s going increasingly insane.  According to their files, without regular treatment he becomes feral and aggressive.  He gets violent towards his own teammates, stalking them like prey or going on a full-on homicidal rampage.” 

Chang didn’t think that sounded so bad, considering who his teammates were. 

“Gentlemen.” Bryan ignored Jepsen’s raised eyebrow.  “We either catch this guy, and soon, or we’re going to have a bloodbath on our hands.”

* * *

The soldier held his now clean jacket under the hand dryer.  Ninochka walked up to him and shook water everywhere. 

The soldier held Ninochka under the hand dryer. 

* * *

Skye was starting to worry. Yasha was—well, not quite late, but later than he usually was. 

It occurred to her that making sure he had a cell phone, and that she had his number, would be a good idea for the future. 

Skye’s shoulders sagged in relief when she saw Yasha running around the corner, holding Ninochka.

“Ninochka rolled in mud and I had to wash her,” he said. 

Skye looked at the damp puppy in his arms and giggled.  “Are you causing trouble?” 

Ninochka wagged her tail and let her mouth flop open.  Skye pet her. 

“It occurred to me that you’re probably not caught up on the great film-making masterpieces of the past half-century,” said Skye.  “Meaning that you’re missing out on one of my favorite movies.  So, if you like, we could go find somewhere quiet…”

* * *

Skye and the soldier settled in the back seat of Skye’s van.  Skye pulled out her laptop, clicked through a couple of folders, and selected a file named _Lilo and Stitch_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You don't have to know Lilo & Stitch to understand everything in this fic, nor will this fic spoil the ending. It's just that one of the characters is a genetically engineered alien designed for destruction and nothing else, so, I had to include it. The other protagonist is a little girl who's struggling to cope with a lack of parents and considered a complete weirdo by her peers, resulting in a lot of loneliness. I headcanon little Skye as being really socially awkward, so she finds Lilo relatable. Plus the overarching theme is family, which is only Skye's lifelong quest.


	10. Chapter 10

_“You were built to destroy.  You can never belong.”_  

_“Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten.”_

The soldier held Ninochka close as colors and music danced through his head.  He didn’t have a word for how he was feeling.  It hurt, and it felt warm, and he wouldn’t mind if it lasted for a long time. 

The movie Skye had shown him was a fairytale, a child’s bedtime story, but it _meant something_ , even if he couldn’t articulate why. 

Then again, the man he used to be was also kind of a fairytale.  It just happened to be historically accurate.  Even though he could remember a few things, Bucky Barnes still felt like a stranger who happened to look like him. 

He dreamt about that, sometimes.  Going back to Steve and being told he wasn’t Steve’s friend, he just looked like him, why would he think he could steal a dead man’s place? 

_Longing. That’s the word for it._

He was longing for something from the story. 

* * *

Trying to make sense of dated, technical Russian—or rather, the slightly garbled English that the translation software spat out—was giving Skye a headache.  Particularly since whoever designed the API for the Winter Soldier’s arm had done a terrible job; Skye was pretty sure she could have done better when she was fifteen. 

She decided that a coffee break was in order. 

When she entered the kitchen Coulson was retrieving a mug from the coffee machine. 

“Coulson!  You exist!  I was beginning to wonder-“ 

“Unfortunately, I only exist long enough to get coffee.”  Coulson gave her a small smile and left with his mug. 

Skye stood alone in the kitchen.

“’Nice to see you, Skye! How are you?  Would you like to help me with the super giant workload that’s eating me alive?’” Skye griped to the empty room.

* * *

“<Hey bro, look! It’s that Siberian hitman.>”

_Oh. Great._  

“<Yasha! Bro!>”  Vanya shouted at him from across the street.

The soldier pretended not to hear him. 

“<Hey bro!>” Vanya shouted louder.

The soldier continued to ignore him. 

This became much harder when Vanya and his friends crossed the street to catch up with him.

“<Hey bro!>”

The soldier turned to look at Vanya and the others. 

“<Bro!  How’s it going?  Did you get my dog back?>” 

The soldier gave Vanya the coldest glare he could manage. 

“<I do not care to interact with you.>” 

Vanya stepped back. The others exchanged glances.

“<What’s his problem, bro?>”

“<Seriously, bro?>”

“<Holy crap, that bro’s scary.>”

Pavel stepped forward. “<You want to think about what you’re doing, bro.>” 

The soldier turned his glare on Pavel. 

“<Bro, do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?>” said Pavel. 

“<Do you?>” replied the soldier. 

There was silence for a moment. 

“<I think,>” said Mikhail, “<that someone should teach the kid some manners, bro.>” 

“<Bro’s going to get himself killed, otherwise,>” said Smart Pyotr.  “<If he pisses off somebody who isn’t as nice as us.>”

“<You’re right, bro. We’d be doing him a favor,>” said Vanya. 

The patient struggled against the doctors strapping him down, too drugged to make any headway.

_Words won’t come, can’t tell them to stop—_

“Quit struggling, we’re doing you a favor.” 

_Stop, stop, please_ stop _—_

* * *

The soldier did not run; he walked.  He flowed with the crowd.  He did not pick at the sleeve that still had the outline of a bloodstain he couldn’t fully wash out.

* * *

Steve answered his ringing cell phone.  “Hey, you found something?” 

“Double homicide. Victims were Russian mobsters, killer’s description matches your guy,” said Detective Singh.  “Are you free anytime soon?” 

“I’m free right now. Where should we meet?”

“I can come to your place.”

A half hour later there was a knock on the door.  Steve opened it to let in a short woman with grey hair tied in a loose ponytail. She handed him a file.

“It happened earlier today. Four other guys are in the hospital, at least one in critical condition.  One of the less injured guys identified their attacker as a Caucasian male, late twenties-early thirties, around six feet, with shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, and a Siberian accent, named Yakov.  They also said that he was a hitman they were trying to recruit who blew them off, though they didn’t mention that part to the police.” 

Steve raised his eyebrows. Detective Singh shrugged.

“People don’t pay a lot of attention to little old ladies, and they don’t expect me to understand Russian.”  She smiled. “I find it useful.”

* * *

Skye was exhausted. Her legs were shaking; her arms felt like an incompetent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had made a misguided attempt to fix them. 

She forced herself to keep drilling anyway, driving her fist into May’s gloved hand again. Block, grab, punch. Repeat. 

“I think that’s enough for today,” said May. 

“I can keep going,” Skye said breathlessly.  “Not like Hydra agents are going to politely wait for me to rest in a real fight.”

“Maybe not, but if Hartley doesn’t report in the next twelve hours, I want you to come with me to investigate.  Which means I need you not to be exhausted.” 

“Fair point. Pretty sure a skinny, sunlight-deprived hacker is more useful in a fight than a bundle of overcooked spaghetti. At least slightly.” Skye grinned at her own stupid joke. 

May smiled as well, a subtle curve to her lips that Skye was pretty sure was engineered to be invisible to all but the most attentive observers, thereby preserving May’s reputation as an emotionless badass. 

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re getting good at this.”

“Wow, um, thanks.” _That means a lot, coming from you._  

Skye had a thought. “Hey, I was wondering—most of the stuff you’re teaching me seems to be for fighting one on one. What do you do against multiple opponents?” 

“If you can help it? You don’t.  A lot of the strategies for multiple opponents basically come down to forcing them to come at you one at a time. Taking the fight to a narrow corridor, for instance.  That said, there are martial arts that lend themselves well to fighting multiple opponents, such as Baguazhang.  We can start working on that, if you’d like.” 

“That sounds great. We’ll start after I stop being an invertebrate?” 

May smiled, answering Skye’s question. 

* * *

The soldier was not going to panic.  He was going to sit calmly, figure out what to do, and then do it. 

_Left witnesses alive_ why _did I leave witnesses—_

He had been thinking of escape, desperate, messy, get away at all costs.  He should have thought of it as a mission: clean, controlled. Eliminate all targets, witnesses, and evidence. 

He needed to know what tools law enforcement would use to find him, and he needed to know how quickly they would work.  That way he could counter—

_Why did I panic knew I could take them insufficient threat—_

He needed to research current forensic techniques and—

_Why did I—_

He needed a head that worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how well-known this is amongst non-writers, but sometimes characters disagree with the author, refusing to do what the plot requires of them or suddenly running off in a new direction. That's how this chapter happened. The plan was for Bucky to *non-lethally* deal with the bros.   
> Oops. 
> 
> SHIELD has really good translation software, which is how Skye is getting something even remotely intelligible. (Technical language can be hard to understand in your native language when you've studied the relevant field, especially since the documentation is often a hastily executed afterthought.) 
> 
> API stands for Application Programmer Interface; basically, a bunch of commands the programmer can used to make the application do what they want. In this case, that would probably be things like turnOffDamageSensors() so your assassin isn't flinching in pain while you repair the arm or lockArmPosition() which you could connect to the signal coming from some random motor neuron, allowing Bucky to, say, keep his arm perfectly steady at will. This is useful because while there may be a bunch of moving parts involved in locking the arm position, you don't need to know all the mechanical engineering details to figure out that a steady arm is useful for a sniper, or that a paralyzed arm will hinder a malfunctioning asset.   
> Example of how this might look in action, featuring ridiculous pseudocode:   
> receivedRadioSignal(OH__CRAP) {  
>  lockArmPosition();  
>  emptySedativeReservoir();  
> }
> 
> Baguazhang is, incidentally, the martial art that airbending is based on in Avatar: The Last Airbender. I think we're told that May has several black belts, but not what specific martial arts they are in; baguazhang could easily be on the list. Here's a very cinematically pretty example (girl doing bagua, guy doing wing chun): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L2YcwrfdeA


	11. Chapter 11

“Steve.” 

“Yeah, Sam?”

“We might want to consider when to call it a night, given that sunrise was an hour ago.” 

“You can go home, it’s fine,” said Steve. 

“Not what I meant,” said Sam. “I know you can keep going for a while, supersoldier and all that, but I also know that you have to stop eventually, even if you don’t want to admit it.” 

“Not there yet.”

“Yeah, and you’ll telling yourself that until you collapse from exhaustion.” 

Steve didn’t have anything to say to that, because Sam was right.  Steve just thought that the problem lay with his insufficient stamina rather than with his behavior. 

“Okay, we’ll just check a few more libraries, then regroup,” said Steve. 

“Just so long as we’re agreed that ‘a few’ means less than five.” 

* * *

After verifying that his usual level of stealth would avoid any immediate threat, the soldier continued researching investigation practices so he could minimize future problems. It was actually relaxing, now that he’d settled into a familiar pattern of data collection and problem-solving.

By the time he heard carpet-muffled footsteps the newcomer was less than fifteen feet away. He went on full alert, hand hovering near the knife hidden at his waist.  He turned to look. 

It was Steve Rogers.

The soldier stared at him, frozen.  Then bolted for the nearest window. 

* * *

“Wait, Bucky!”

Steve ran after him. Bucky swung himself through a window in one smooth motion.  Steve tried to do the same, and found that the window was just small enough to make navigating his bulk through it tricky. 

The extra seconds were enough for Bucky to disappear completely. 

Steve ran to look around the corners at either end of the alley, but didn’t find any indication of which way Bucky had gone. 

He had been so close.

* * *

The soldier watched Rogers run back and forth from his hiding spot on the roof. 

Judging from his body language he was upset.  Rogers paused midstride, and the soldier ducked out of view right before he looked up. The soldier held his breath and listened for footsteps to start echoing off hard surfaces again before peeking over the edge.  Rogers was pacing, purposeless but too agitated to stay still. 

Suddenly Rogers shouted in frustration and drove his fist into the wall below.  The soldier jumped.  He retreated behind the edge of the roof as far as he could while still observing Rogers.  He tried to breathe quietly; he was breathing too loudly, Rogers was going to hear—

Rogers slumped against the wall. 

For a moment the soldier thought there might be an attacker, before he realized it was an emotional response.  It didn’t match the patterns he knew for people reacting to a failed pursuit.

Rogers started shaking.  

_That’s not—he’s not supposed to—that’s not okay._  

He didn’t know why, it just wasn’t.  

He realized that he had seen someone acting like Rogers was now.  In Skye’s movie, when Nani thought she had lost her sister forever.

The soldier gripped the edge of the roof with trembling fingers.  Something was very wrong, and he needed to fix it.

* * *

“Ninochka, find food.”

The soldier tipped the puppy into the dumpster and climbed in after her.  He could think of six categories of upsetting things: cold, hunger, thirst, sleep-deprivation, pain, and complicated crap that he didn’t know how to deal with.  Water fountains were publicly available and no one was trapping Rogers in a noisy room, leaving cold and hunger as problems that the soldier could solve. 

Rogers had had trouble climbing through the window, which could be due to an injury.  An injury would make scavenging harder. The soldier didn’t know if SHIELD had fed and equipped Rogers because he was a supersoldier or just given him money because he was a person, but either way Rogers didn’t have that anymore.

It wasn’t as though Rogers’ self-preservation instinct could be depended on to keep him fed.  The soldier wasn’t sure if the man even had a self-preservation instinct. 

Ninochka barked. The soldier picked up the container of yogurt she found. 

“Good girl, Ninochka. You’re such a good dog.” He scritched her head. “Find more food.”

The yogurt was one day past the expiration date, so the soldier put it in the backpack he had brought along.  While Ninochka searched for food, he dug through the garbage looking for warm clothes.

* * *

The soldier picked up a small container and was about to toss it aside when he noticed it was labeled ‘silicone-based lubricant’. He knew that the lubricant Hydra technicians used on his arm was silicone-based, so he examined the container more closely.  It was still about half-full, and was additionally labeled ‘personal lubricant’. _Wait, that means…that means there are enough cyborgs for them to make lubricant specifically for mechanical body parts._   The soldier had seen a couple of people with prosthetic legs but until now he had thought that most of the population was purely organic. 

He felt his mouth stretch into a smile, and turned the container over to read the back. 

_For Topical Use: apply desired amount to genital areas._  

“…oh.”

* * *

“Are you okay?”

Skye dragged her attention back to Yasha’s calculus lesson.  “Yeah, sorry, I keep getting distracted thinking about work stuff.”

Yasha looked very concerned.

“Would it…would it help if I killed someone?” 

Skye took a moment to process how quickly Yasha had jumped to a lethal solution. 

“…it’s not that kind of problem.” 

“Oh.” 

Yasha looked down at his hands, Skye looked at her uneaten fragment of sandwich, and both of them were awkwardly silent. 

“One of the people I work with,” said Skye, “he’s—we’re pretty close, or at least we were. Lately he’s been so busy all the time it’s like he doesn’t exist.  And, I know, he has a lot to do, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend five minutes a day talking to people and being…unhermitty.” 

“Oh.” 

There was another awkward silence. 

“Do…um, do you…” Yasha trailed off.

Skye waited for him to finish, making sure not to look either distracted or impatient. Where Fitz would lose words off the ends of sentences, Yasha had a number of concepts he didn’t know how to verbalize. 

Or had difficulty verbalizing without fear of punishment. 

“Do you want a hug?”

Yasha shrank a little bit after finishing his sentence.  Skye wasn’t sure if he didn’t actually want to hug her or if he was just scared of asking. 

“I would love to have a hug, but only if you would also enjoy it.” 

Yasha hesitated, then got up and walked around the table.  Skye stood up and spread her arms, deliberately closing only half of the distance. 

Yasha was very tentative as he wrapped his arms around her.  As he became more confident he let himself melt around her like a cat melting into a lap.  He rested his chin on her head, and Skye realized how long it had been since someone hugged her like this.

* * *

Hugging Skye wasn’t quite like cuddling Ninochka, but it was similar.  It was somewhat scarier, and seemed to fill a slightly different need. 

Ninochka couldn’t hug back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yogurt and other dairy products are usually good for about a week after the expiration date (I could be wrong, but I haven't gotten food poisoning yet). I don't know exactly how lack of refrigeration factors in, other than that yogurt holds up a lot better than milk.   
> Apparently a lot of good food ends up in dumpsters (along with other things, like clothes), because people throw things out if *they* don't plan on using the thing, not if the thing is unusable. Of course, a lot of bad food also ends up in dumpsters. I have not personally gone dumpster diving but from what I understand it comes down to detective work and making educated guesses. 
> 
> I may need to slow down to posting a chapter every two weeks. I have a buffer of finished chapters, so next week's will be up as planned, but my writing pace has slowed down significantly since I started. I'm trying to work out the exact plot and where to end the first installment and such. Plus they keep making more episodes of AoS, which then interact with later plot details, and I have to update stuff. (Also plotholes. I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out why someone would need to "decrypt the Index" when Natasha already decrypted and dumped all of SHIELD's files on the internet.)


	12. Chapter 12

The soldier wasn’t sure when to end the hug.  When Skye started to let go he followed her lead. 

“I don’t suppose you have any workplace drama?” said Skye. 

The soldier hesitated. His instinct was to not divulge any information he didn’t have to, to anyone. 

But Skye hadn’t done anything to hurt him so far.  And even though he couldn’t remember anyone who acted like her—he had an instinct that said she wouldn’t start now. 

“I…had to leave my job.”

“What happened?” asked Skye.

“I…there…there was a group of men, and they—they wanted to hurt me, and I could have taken them easily but I panicked, and I killed some of them.  Four at the most, I didn’t check.  There were six in total.”  The soldier caught his breath.  “I told them my name was Yasha, and I told my boss the same name.”

“So the police could find you through your job.” 

The soldier nodded.

“That sucks, I’m sorry,” said Skye.  “Um, do you want to go to my van?  So we don’t have to worry about talking quietly?” 

* * *

After the two of them slid into Skye’s van, Yasha sat holding Ninochka and stared straight ahead.

“So…” Skye broke the silence. “Any other relevant details?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know why I freaked out, I shouldn’t have…” Yasha trailed off. 

“Sometimes freak-outs just…happen.  One time when I was eight I had a complete meltdown because the TV was on and two people were having a conversation and another person was talking on the phone, all at the same time.  I mean, I didn’t kill anyone—just yelled and cried—but it’s not like the talking was going to hurt me, so—yeah.  Sometimes your brain just does stuff,” said Skye.  “There might be patterns to what sets you off, in which case you can figure out work-arounds.” 

“…it doesn’t mean I’m broken?”

Yasha’s words resonated with a familiar ache inside of Skye.  “Not any more than I am.” 

Yasha looked at her like the world had just turned out to be better than he’d ever dared to hope. _Oh. I know that look. That’s the thank-God-I’m-not-alone look._  

“Does this mean you’ll start going by another name?” asked Skye. 

“Yeah,” said Yasha.

“Got one in mind?”

“I…was thinking of Alyosha, but—maybe I should pick a name that isn’t Russian.” 

“That would probably be good. Distances you from people’s idea of the Winter Soldier more,” she said. 

“…I want my name.” He glanced at Skye and then looked away again. 

_Okay, discussing serious stuff here.  Hang on, have you used the word ‘want’ before?  Besides when you’re talking about other people._

“Maybe you could use part of it.” 

Yasha looked at Skye.

“I mean, ‘Bucky’ is distinctive and all, but ‘James’ is a really common name,” she said.  “If you run into someone who already knows who you are they’ll probably notice, but as far as everyone else is concerned it’s just a name.” 

She watched him consider her idea.  His face brightened almost imperceptibly; if Skye weren’t used to May she would have missed it.

He pet Ninochka and didn’t say anything for several minutes. 

“So, uh—how are you doing with avoiding the police?” Skye asked. 

Not that it was likely that a legendary Soviet assassin didn’t know how to evade authorities, but from what she understood he didn’t stick around after finishing missions. Hiding for a few days wasn’t the same as hiding for a few months. 

“I did research. I know the theory,” he said. “There are usually complications moving from theory to practice.” 

_Yeah. That._  

“I have some experience with long-term evasion, though the authorities weren’t looking for me in particular. I was able to delete all digital records of my existence,” said Skye. 

“It wouldn’t—if it were just the police I wouldn’t be concerned, but if I have to use…unusual skills to avoid capture, it could attract feds.  In which case I would have to disappear too deeply to make it to our next meeting.” 

_Not if I can help it._  

“Here.”  Skye grabbed an old receipt stuffed in a cup holder and pulled a pen out of her pocket.  “This one’s my phone number, and this one’s Coulson’s in case I don’t answer.  I haven’t told Coulson about you, but he’s a good guy.  Likes to help people, and can see the good in them when no one else does.  If there’s an emergency, he’ll help you.” 

Not-Yasha took the receipt, staring at it as though he were committing it to memory.  Skye waited until he put it in his pocket before she spoke again. 

“In terms of relevant experience, Mike is visually distinctive, wanted, and still at large. He might have some tips.”

Skye’s friend looked thoughtful. 

“What’s he like?”

* * *

Steve walked up the stairs with a bag of groceries, and tried to find amusement in the idea of having a whole team of federal agents whose job was to watch him buy cereal. It had been a day since he saw Bucky at the library; if he wanted to find him again he needed the calories and morale to keep searching. 

When he went into his apartment he noticed there was stuff on the table that he hadn’t put there. He put down his bag and moved closer to investigate. 

There was a can of soup with a large dent in it, a package of bagels with several spots neatly cut out which he suspected used to be moldy, two containers of yogurt a couple days after their expiration date, a pair of white socks, a pair of bright pink fuzzy socks, and a grayish-blue hoodie.  On closer inspection, he saw that one of the cuffs on the hoodie had been torn and then carefully stitched back together, with little white stars embroidered over the bits that had required darning. 

Steve hugged the hoodie to his chest.  His eyes felt warm as tears started to well up. 

The Great Depression was long gone, but Bucky was still trying to keep him fed and clothed.

* * *

The soldier had a name. He was going to meet a new person. He had started to help Steve Rogers. 

And he was terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry the chapter's late, I had last-minute editing anxiety.) 
> 
> I'm writing Skye as having mild ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder). (Mild ASD used to be called Asperger's Syndrome, but the DSM 5 consolidated it with the rest of the autistic spectrum.) Autistic!Skye is not as supported by canon as autistic!Tony (he gets sensory overload *on screen* in IM2 because of the spinny doohickey on Pepper's desk), but it is consistent with canon.  
> Commons autistic traits include:  
> Sensory processing difficulties-getting easily overwhelmed by sensory input, such as too much motion (Tony with the spinny doohickey) or too much auditory data (Skye's story in this chapter)  
> Lack of social skills/misinterpretation of social cues-most of Tony Stark's interactions with other human beings, Skye sometimes (first conversation with Mike Peterson comes to mind) although she has taught herself to be pretty good at social stuff  
> Intense interest in specific subjects-stereotypically topics in math or science, but can just as easily be things like the evolution of Victorian fashion over time or MCU Bucky Barnes (hiiiii); to say that Tony likes engineering and Skye likes computer science is an understatement  
> Verbal/communication difficulties-autistic people might be completely nonverbal, or write thousands of words for the fun of it, or be anywhere in between; nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions) is similarly varied  
> Repetitive behaviors-one example is stimming (self-soothing repetitive motions, such as rocking, hand-flapping, and so on); researchers recently suggested that stimming is used for emotional regulation, to which the autistic community responded "well, duh"  
> Intense emotions (and empathy)-I don't know exactly how much research there is on this, but anecdotally this is pretty common, to the point where a lot of people learn how to shut themselves off from emotion to avoid being overwhelmed; Skye definitely has intense empathy  
> Bluntness-this can be good (straightforward, honest, to the point) or bad (brusque, tactless, rude) depending on the situation
> 
> (I'm probably missing stuff, but I'm trying to do a quick overview)
> 
> About four times as many boys are diagnosed with autism as girls; I hold to the theory that this is because we're bad at diagnosing girls, and not because autism is actually less common in girls. 
> 
> Skye is very good at performing socially; at this point in her life it's unlikely that she'll ever be diagnosed. She's probably learned to either control stimming when she's around other people, or stim in ways that are subtle (rubbing a thumb back and forth over finger tips, fiddling with a lock of hair, tapping toes, etc.). She's either naturally very verbal or she's taught herself to be. She has fashionable hair, makeup, and clothes, which could be the result of a special interest or could be something she learned for social utility. Hiding in her van (like the time Coulson finds her there) would have provided a reprieve from excessive sensory stimulus while the team was living on the Bus.
> 
> EDIT: I learned more about autism after writing this, and noticed a couple of mistakes.  
> The more glaring one is that I misunderstood what people meant when they said 'nonverbal': I thought it meant no language (spoken, written, sign) but actually it just means no spoken language. So someone could be completely nonverbal AND write thousands of words for the fun of it. Someone else might be highly talkative.   
> The more subtle one is the misconception that the autism spectrum is a simple severity spectrum from mild to severe, when in fact some of your symptoms can be severe and some can be mild at the same time. For example, you might be good at talking but extremely sensitive to sensory overload.


	13. Chapter 13

Skye opened an email from May.

_Had an expert look into the Karpov method._

_Short version: you were right about brainwashing._  

She was not going to think about Ward.  Whatever Garrett had done to secure his loyalty, he couldn’t be trusted.  He was too good at deception for anyone to know if he’d stopped lying.  And she wouldn’t feel bad for him, not when there were people like Sitwell and Bucky who had definitely been brainwashed. 

Skye suddenly felt sick. Brainwashing might have been her theory, but it hadn’t sunk in before.  Even with everything Hydra did to Mike, they couldn’t have made him hurt Ace. 

1926: Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes became friends. 

1928: Steve Rogers came down with scarlet fever; Bucky Barnes risked infection to help take care of him.

1936: Sarah Rogers died of tuberculosis; Steve moved in with the Barnes family. 

1943: Steve Rogers went thirty miles behind enemy lines, alone, to rescue Bucky Barnes; they started fighting together in the Howling Commandos. 

Skye had read those facts over and over, in different books, in sunlight and under covers. Steve and Bucky weren’t just friends, they were best friends for two decades straight. 

2014: Hydra ordered the Winter Soldier to kill Captain America. 

Skye thought about the young man who accidentally adopted a dog because it was hungry, who had defended Skye fiercely after knowing her for just a few weeks.  She thought about her friend who was scared to ask certain questions and flinched whenever he thought he’d upset her.

She thought about what Garrett had apparently said to Fitz, about _no rank_ _and lots of pain_ , and _either way your services will be appreciated_.

They were going to stop Hydra. Skye, May, Coulson, and the rest of the team were going to stop Hydra so they couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.

* * *

“How’s the investigation going?” Agent Falters asked cheerily, handing much-appreciated coffee to Chang and Jepsen. 

“Slower than we’d like. Bryan’s still interrogating the victims’ friends, though they’ve probably told us everything. Kurosaki’s checking animal shelters to see who’s gotten a black and white puppy recently, but right now that’s our best lead,” said Jepsen. 

“Not that it helps us if he picked up a stray,” said Chang. 

“And here I thought more people would notice a robot arm,” said Falters. 

“Yes, well, he’s discovered an amazing modern technology known as _sleeves_ ,” said Chang. 

“At least Captain Rogers hasn’t ditched us again.  Wait, I mean ‘used a shortcut’,” said Jepsen. 

Falters suddenly looked nervous.  _Wait a minute…_  

Jepsen caught Chang’s eye and the two of them stared at Falters until he folded under the pressure.

“Okay, uh, so…he snuck back into his apartment around seven in the morning a couple days ago.”

“Snuck—“ said Chang.

“ _In?_ ” said Jepsen. 

“We didn’t see when he left. But hey, nothing happened to him! So no harm done.”

Jepsen had a powerful desire to demonstrate certain joint-locks on Falters.  For educational purposes. 

“And you didn’t report this because…?” she said. 

“Uhhhh…” 

“I am never going to hear the end of this from Bryan,” said Chang. 

* * *

The soldier was not thinking about Mike Peterson, or the fact that they were scheduled to meet today. He was thinking about socks, and Steve Rogers’ lack thereof.  Ninochka snuffled through the garbage next to him.  So far all he’d found in this dumpster was a pair of gloves.  

_James._  He rolled the name around in his head.  _My name is James_.  He shoved a flattened box out of the way, revealing exactly zero socks. _My name is James_.  He mouthed it this time, and moved a bag that was probably full of kitty litter. _My name is James Buchanan Barnes_. 

He was seized by a sudden fear that Pierce would find out what he was thinking and take it away.

Pierce would not approve of his current activities.  Finding food and clothes for himself was keeping the Asset functional and hidden. Finding food and clothes for Rogers was…unnecessary.  Erratic. Disloyal. 

Requiring reset and recalibration. 

Alexander Pierce was supposed to be dead; Bucky Barnes was also supposed to be dead.  The soldier started moving everything back to where it was when he first climbed into the dumpster. 

He kept the gloves he had found. He wasn’t sure if Rogers had enough gloves. 

* * *

“Oh, I figured I should ask before we go in—how do you want to be introduced?  You could give a name, or we could say that the name situation is complicated…” 

Skye watched her friend’s face; it looked less like he was considering, and more like he was gathering courage. 

“My name is James.”

“Cool.”  Skye smiled, and left it at that.  Just because this was a big deal didn’t necessarily mean he wanted a big deal made of it. 

* * *

They approached the building, and the soldier—James—veered off towards the side. 

“Where are you going?” asked Skye. 

“Around back? There’s probably an unlocked window, though I have lock picks…” 

Skye was giving him a very odd look. 

“Usually when people visit other people they go in the front door,” she said. 

“Oh.” 

He probably should have known this; he’d watched enough people do it.  Skye didn’t seem upset though. 

_Wait, does that mean I shouldn’t enter Rogers’ apartment through the window?_

She knocked on the door. James fidgeted as discreetly as possible by shifting the plates on his left arm back and forth, locking and unlocking them in place. 

“Don’t worry. I promise he doesn’t bite, and besides, he’s only got the one rocket launcher installed.”  Skye smiled impishly. 

“Rocket launchers I know how to deal with, he can have as many of those as he wants, but if he starts talking about sluggish schizophrenia or world peace-“ 

The door opened to reveal a man with burn scars covering much of his face and head.  The soldier snapped his face into a neutral expression.

“Hi, I’m Mike. So you’re Skye’s friend, then?”

_Skye isn’t—we’re not—_

James started panicking; when he glanced at Skye he felt a sensation of weightlessness.

“I’m not—I don’t—“ The soldier had to consciously think about breathing. 

“Um, he’s my acquaintance,” Skye corrected; his panic subsided.  Mike nodded and let them in. 

“Can I ask your name or is that classified?” 

“James.” 

Using his name felt rebellious and oddly satisfying. 

“Ace is working on homework, so we probably have until he gets hopelessly stuck or bored.” Mike jerked his head toward one of the other rooms in the apartment. 

“He’s doing homework and he’s not already bored?”  Skye raised her eyebrows. 

“Oh, he’s bored, but he’s not _hopelessly_ bored. There’s a difference.” Mike smiled.  James guessed that Ace was someone important.

Mike turned to him.

“So, you need to avoid the police?” 

“And the FBI. And the CIA, NSA, INTERPOL—”

“I get the picture,” said Mike.  “I was caught on video decapitating a drug lord, so I’m familiar with the situation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henceforth switching to a fortnightly update schedule. 
> 
> In order to lock up political dissidents who hadn't done anything illegal, psychiatrists in the Soviet Union basically made up a mental disorder, sluggish schizophrenia. From the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union): 'pessimism, poor social adaptation, and conflict with authorities [...] were themselves sufficient for a formal diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia with scanty symptoms."'  
> So mentally healthy people who disagreed with the government could be diagnosed and forced into mental hospitals. Combining this with what we know of the MCU leads to fun worldbuilding possibilities. 
> 
> Humans have tiny accelerometers in our ears. Usually they just pick up acceleration due to gravity, telling us which way is down. There are two circumstances in which they register zero acceleration: weightlessness, and falling.


	14. Chapter 14

“If you tell me what they have on you I can focus on the tactics that will be relevant for you, though I understand if you don’t want to get into specifics,” said Mike.

James considered for a moment.

“Hydra had records of deploying me for nearly thirty assassination missions, as well as sabotage and information acquisition.” 

Mike’s remaining eyebrow went up. 

“That’s, uh—that’s a situation,” he said.  “Though I guess they haven’t caught you yet.  Do they know what your face looks like?” 

James shook his head. “None of the digital files have pictures.” 

Skye watched James’ face and body language throughout the conversation with Mike.  She hadn’t expected the word ‘friend’ to upset him, though in retrospect it made sense.  Hydra had fried part of his brain, and then told him to kill the best friend he couldn’t remember. 

They called the procedure a _stereotactic electrosurgical leucotomy_ , as though using a synonym for lobotomy and prefacing it with lots of syllables made it any less barbaric or cruel.  At any rate, whatever happened during the ‘Rogers mission’ couldn’t have been fun.  There was a reason she hadn’t asked him about it yet. 

* * *

“When you got caught on tape, was there a camera you didn’t expect to be there?” asked James.

“Not exactly,” said Mike. “I didn't pay attention to cameras, because my instructions were to put on a show.” 

James thought about the footage of him fighting Rogers on a causeway that was plastered all over the Internet and news.  He couldn’t remember it, and now wondered if he had also been instructed to put on a show. It would explain the absolutely embarrassing lack of stealth. 

“Do you mind if I ask who they took?  Skye mentioned you were in the same boat as me.  You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” said Mike. 

“Who they took?” James had no idea what Mike was talking about. 

“When Hydra wanted me to work for them they installed a killswitch,” Mike gestured at his eye, “but they also took my son.  Just in case I decided to be heroic.” 

James started to feel sick before he consciously made the connection. 

“They said they would hurt him if you…?” 

Mike nodded.

James felt empty and useless. Disorganized thoughts about _responsibility to protect_ and _cheating_ tumbled through his mind. Eventually they coalesced into two clear ideas. 

Mike made sense.

People talked about assassination like it was a bad thing, but eliminating people who would hurt Mike’s son had to be an improvement. 

“Is anyone responsible for you?”  James surprised himself by asking. 

“Is anyone…I don’t understand your question,” said Mike. 

“You’re responsible for your son, someone could be responsible for you…”  James didn’t know how else to phrase it. 

“I get what you’re saying. No one’s responsible for me the way I am for Ace, though I do have friends who will help me on a smaller scale if I need it.” 

Mike had mentioned Ace earlier in the conversation. 

“Your son is bored, but not hopelessly bored?” 

Mike laughed. “That’s him.  You have a good memory.” 

Familiarity stung the soldier as he faced the man with the shield. 

_“You know me.”_  

Rogers was lying, they said Rogers would lie— 

_“No I don’t!”_  

“James?” 

_“Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life.”_  

“James, are you okay?”

He gasped and struggled to pull himself back to the present.  Both his hands were fists, the knuckles on his right hand pale yellow from being clenched so tight.  His breathing slowed as he processed that his hands were resting on a table, in an apartment, in New York, that belonged to Mike Peterson. 

“I don’t remember who they took.” 

“What?” said Skye.

“I don’t remember who they took in case I decided to be heroic.  I don’t remember most of the missions they sent me on.  I don’t—I don’t have a good memory.”

Lab techs and handlers sneering at his mental frailty echoed through the soldier’s mind.  He stared at his hands so he wouldn’t see disappointment or disgust on Skye and Mike’s faces. 

“I don’t even remember my name.  Had to be told,” he mumbled. 

* * *

“You’re not surprised. You’re not even _pretending_ to be surprised,” said Jepsen. 

Agent Carter blinked innocently over her half-finished taco.  Agent Kurosaki sipped her water without taking her eyes off of the other two women. 

“I was assigned to monitor Steve while I was at SHIELD.  What you’re describing is typical for him.” 

“Unbelievable. Of _course_ he turns out to be a difficult assignment.  Meanwhile Bryan still thinks he’s a ‘model citizen’.”

Carter burst out laughing. “Does he really?”

“It was his reason for dismissing the possibility that Rogers would deliberately ditch his protective detail,” said Jepsen. 

“Oh wow, that’s a good one. Because illegally lying on enlistment forms—repeatedly—is definitely model behavior,” said Carter.

“Wait, seriously?” said Kurosaki.  “My fourth grade history teacher did _not_ tell us about that.” 

“Of course not, then you might have _fun_ in _school_.” 

Judging by the look on Carter’s face, there was a lot of fun to be had.  _Okay, I’ll bite_.

“What else didn’t our history teachers tell us?  I need to know for professional reasons,” said Jepsen. 

“Well, there’s the story of how Steve made it onto the battlefield—disobeyed orders by sneaking thirty miles behind enemy lines to rescue a friend he wasn’t even sure was still alive,” said Carter.  “With help from Aunt Peggy.  A remarkable number of his reckless decisions were encouraged by Aunt Peggy.” 

“Your aunt knew Captain America?” said Kurosaki. 

“My aunt worked with Steve extensively, kissed him in the middle of a battle, and took over the Howling Commandos after he crashed a plane into the ocean.” 

Kurosaki leaned forward, her face lit up with interest.  Jepsen had to remind herself that there was still food on her plate.

“Let’s see. He eventually got good at using his shield as a thrown weapon, but before then there were several incidents of accidentally throwing it away in the middle of a fight. He brought candy with him on missions that went behind enemy lines to bribe civilian kids into not reporting them. Four of the Commandos learned the Captain America propaganda song, in four-part harmony, in order to troll Steve.  A few of them—the Jameses, I think—gave him a pair of star-spangled underwear for his birthday.”

“The Jameses?” asked Kurosaki.

“James Buchanan Barnes, James Morita, and James Montgomery Falsworth.  They had a three-way prank war, but occasionally teamed up against other members of the SSR.” 

Carter took a sip of water.

“Oh yeah, you know how stockings were rationed because they needed the nylon for parachutes? One of the Commandos—I forget which—apparently liked to shout ‘stockings to the rescue!’ when pulling his parachute.  There was also Bucky Barnes’ ‘Look of Doom’—those are my aunt’s exact words—which he used whenever Steve did something particularly dumb.” 

Jepsen gave up pretending to be only mildly interested. 

“And, of course, there was the fondue saga.” 

“The fondue saga?” said Jepsen.

Carter’s face radiated mischief. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Stereotactic electrosurgery" is made up, but stereotactic radiosurgery is an actual thing. The basic idea is to figure out exactly where the tissue you want to kill is (say, a tumor in the brain) and aim several beams of radiation so that they converge on that point; the tumor gets blasted with all the radiation and dies, while the surrounding tissue gets a much lower dose of radiation and survives. I'm not sure exactly how this concept would translate to electricity, since electricity is a flow from point A to point B rather than a beam that can be aimed, but *waves hand* sci fi universe. 
> 
> I am way too amused by the number of Jameses in the Howling Commandos. It gets even better because "Jacques" come from the same root as "James," meaning that more than half the Howling Commandos have basically the same name.


	15. Chapter 15

The sound of Ace’s door opening caught Mike’s attention.  He had no reason to think James would do anything to hurt Ace, but he had to fight down a surge of paranoia anyway. 

“Daaaad, this problem is stupid and I can’t do it.” 

Ace held out his math workbook, letting it flop open to the offending page. 

“Okay, let’s take a look,” said Mike.  “Though I haven’t done this in a while; it wasn’t needed for my job and I didn’t review it yet because I was busy reading about invertebrates to help with your biology homework.”

“I’m good at math,” said Skye. “Though admittedly I make computers do it for me whenever I can.” 

“I do math without computers,” said James. 

Mike looked at James, who shrank slightly.  He turned back to Ace. 

“How about you bring it here, and we’ll see what the four of us can come up with.” 

Mike made sure to include James, but he also made sure to sit between him and Ace. 

“Wait, this is long division. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment and is therefore disallowed by the Constitution,” said Skye. 

“See Dad?  I _told_ you.”

“Congratulations on paying attention in history; that is not what the Constitution was talking about,” said Mike. 

James was squinting at the page.

“Why are there so many digits? You never need that much precision in the field,” he said. 

Ace looked apprehensive, and Mike remembered the last time he’d dealt with people who worked ‘in the field’.

“Is he an agent?” Ace whispered. 

“Sort of.  He’s like me,” Mike said aloud. 

James looked up from the workbook.  Mike continued.

“And you might need that much precision if you decide to be a scientist or engineer.”

“Scientists and engineers use calculators,” said Skye. 

Mike gave her a _look_ to tell her that she was not helping.  Skye took the hint.

“But if you don’t pass your arithmetic classes you won’t get to higher math, which is when stuff gets really cool,” she said. 

“Do you need long division to study cnidarians?” Ace asked very seriously. 

“Dunno, I was doing activities of dubious legality on my laptop during bio class instead of paying attention.” 

“What’s a cnidarian?” asked James. 

“Jellyfish!” Ace’s face lit up.

Mike was pretty sure Ace was taking the opportunity to avoid his homework, but he didn’t have the heart to stop Ace as he launched into a detailed description of the jellyfish reproductive cycle. 

They eventually made it back to the topic of Ace’s current assignment.  Skye and James ended up staying a few hours longer than originally planned, but since this resulted in Ace getting all his math homework done Mike couldn’t complain.  For all that they criticized the workbook problems, Skye and James were remarkably helpful in motivating Ace to do them. 

Mike was going to have to remember the trick of rewriting the word problems to include things like bioluminescent jellyfish and spaceships. 

* * *

“Sam, he’s been leaving food and clothes for me.  He’s not a threat, he’s trying to take care of me, like he always did.” 

“I know, I heard you on the phone.  And in the stairwell. And I read your texts, all eighteen of them.” 

“But he’s—he’s still there, after everything they did to him, he’s still Bucky.  And look,” Steve grabbed his hoodie off the back of a chair, “he fixed it really nicely, and he picked a jacket that’s—“

“Very fuzzy and soft on the inside, I know.  You texted me, remember?” 

Steve held the jacket and tried not to say anything for a few minutes.  

“Hey,” said Sam, “I know this is a big deal.” 

Sam reached for the hoodie.

“Oh, that _is_ really soft.” 

“Told you,” said Steve.

“Yes you did.” Sam smiled.  “So what’s our next move?” 

“Not sure,” said Steve.

“How’d you make friends with him the first time?” asked Sam. 

“I didn’t. He made friends with me.”

Steve thought for a moment.

“We need to get rid of my protective detail,” he said.  “One team follows me around, with a secondary team that keeps watching the apartment when I’m away.  He leaves stuff while I’m gone, taking most of the security with me.” 

“Convincing the CIA that this is a good idea will be hard,” said Sam.  “I don’t suppose he could sneak in while you’re gone and just hang around until you get back?” 

Steve wanted to believe there was some reason that wouldn’t work—that Bucky was only staying away because he had to—but he couldn’t think of one.  Somehow the idea of Bucky avoiding him had been easier to handle when it was paired with open hostility. 

“If he—“ the words stopped in Steve’s throat, “if he doesn’t want to come see me…” 

He couldn’t push past the utter _wrongness_ of what he was saying. He and Bucky were friends, playmates, partners in crime and brothers in arms; either one _wanting_ to stay away from the other—

“It could be for a lot of reasons,” said Sam.  “Though I’m not sure where to start with investigating that.” 

Steve absent-mindedly wandered over to the window, which was most likely Bucky’s point of entry. Something just outside it caught his attention; he opened the window and poked his head out. There was a full plastic bag duct-taped to the bottom of the window frame. 

“Find something?” asked Sam, walking over. 

“Yeah…”  Steve picked up the note sitting on top of what appeared to be several pairs of socks. 

_Sorry_

_I didn’t know going through windows was bad, sorry_

_I won’t do it again_

_Sorry_

Steve handed Sam the note.

“Does he usually apologize this much?” said Sam.  “Also, notes aren’t a bad idea.  You could ask him what he’s thinking, maybe invite him to stick around.”

~~~~~

_“Hey! That doesn’t belong to you!”_

_Steve barely stopped himself from taking a step back as the sandwich thief, who was at least a head taller than he was, turned to face him. The original owner of the sandwich melted back into the crowd._

_“Says who?”_

_A brief discussion of justice later, and Steve lost his own sandwich. Before he could figure out what to do next, someone poked his shoulder.  Steve turned around to see a boy with brown hair offering him half a sandwich._

_“I can’t—that’s_ your _sandwich, I can’t take half your lunch.”_

_“Sure you can.”  He wiggled the sandwich half._

_“Just because I managed to get my lunch stolen doesn’t mean you should go hungry!”_

_The boy raised his eyebrows, and sat down next to Steve.  He started eating the other half of his sandwich._

_“Mmm, this is really good, too bad I’m only hungry enough to eat half.”_

_Steve tried to ignore him._

_“Gosh, it really is a shame that the other half is gonna go to waste.” The boy took another bite, an expression of exaggerated bliss on his face._

_Steve gave in and took the sandwich half._

_“Thanks. My name’s Steve, by the way.”_

_“Bucky.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's worth noting that even with calculators, learning to do arithmetic in your head is useful; you're more likely to notice when you make a typo and get an answer that makes no sense.   
> Higher math involves a very different type of thinking than arithmetic, so it's easy to have wildly different skill levels/enjoyment levels in each.


	16. Chapter 16

When James got back to where he’d left Ninochka she greeted him like she never expected to see him again. She whipped her tail back and forth; her whole body wriggled in disorganized half-circles around James’ feet. Happy barks were mixed with whimpering that made him hurt inside. 

James picked Ninochka up, and she promptly covered every inch of his face in saliva.   He decided that he was never going to leave her alone for that long again. 

* * *

Sharon read through the medical research she’d retrieved from a secret SHIELD archive, her anger growing.

Some of the drugs described had horrible side effects, and she understood keeping those secret. Others, though—

Others could be doing a lot of good, and as far as she could tell were only classified because of the unusual source of the GH project.  GH-120, for instance.  It was shown to reverse brain atrophy, with only mild side effects.  It didn’t take a medical degree to make the leap to curing dementia. 

Aunt Peggy still thought Sharon was in high school.  Sharon would tell her that she’d graduated, gone to college, gotten a job—and if she was lucky Peggy would remember for the rest of the conversation. Just last week Peggy had told Sharon she should apply for a job at SHIELD, and not to worry about favoritism due to family connections because she was more than competent enough all on her own. 

Sharon had changed the topic. She wouldn’t lie to her aunt, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain about SHIELD falling for the fifth time.  

* * *

Mike struggled to make polymer clay behave itself.  Ace had all the Heroes of New York™ action figures, but since they didn't make Chitauri figures to go with them the Heroes had no one to fight.  So Mike had bought clay and pulled images from the Internet to reference, figuring Ace would have bad guys to defeat over and over again within an hour. 

Now it was three hours later, half the clay was used up on a Chitauri which had come out of the oven melted and flopped over, and the other half had somehow ended up so soft it smushed the wrong way whenever Mike touched it, except for a few pieces which were slightly more malleable than rocks. 

“It’s okay, that one just ran into the Hulk,” said Ace, pointing to the flopped over Chitauri.

Mike appreciated Ace’s support; he just really wanted to give Ace a toy that didn’t need a backstory. He took one of the hard pieces and started rolling it in his hands. 

“Hey Dad, is Skye’s friend coming back?  I liked him, he didn’t treat me like a little kid.” 

“I don’t know. I’d have to ask Skye, since I don’t know how to get in contact with James.” 

* * *

James tussled with Ninochka, letting himself fall backwards when she launched herself at him. Ninochka tugged on his hair; he twisted around and mouthed her ear, teeth carefully sheathed behind lips.

When they finished playing they headed off to do more scavenging.  There was a dumpster behind a pizza place that would have plenty of fresh food in about a half hour, so James decided to kill time searching a dumpster a couple blocks away. 

When Ninochka and he started shuffling through the trash a very quiet squeaking started. Ninochka tilted her head, and James held still while he tried to locate the sound.  He approached the corner it seemed to be coming from, and started shifting objects.  Just under the surface was a cardboard box; when he opened it there were several blue-eyed kittens inside.  They looked up at him, and the rest of them joined their noisier sibling in crying. 

* * *

Natasha answered her phone.

“Hey Sharon,” she said cheerily. 

“Heyyy, haven’t seen you in a while, and I want to ask a favor.  Which you can of course say no to, I know you’re working on that project of yours, but I figured—you know, you might know someone who’s available and has the right skillset…” 

The sound of Sharon’s voice and speech patterns reminded Natasha of how adorable she and Steve would be as a couple.  Natasha had spent months barraging both of them with dating options to help put them in the right mindset to start dating each other.  SHIELD falling disrupted things a bit, as did Steve’s Epic Road Trip to Find Bucky, but Natasha was patient. 

“Pepper, Maria, and I are getting lunch tomorrow.  Why don’t you join us and we can discuss it then?” 

Steve wasn’t the only one who needed to get out more. 

* * *

James arrived at an abandoned subway station, box full of kittens in hand.  Ninochka happily bounced over to the knotted t-shirt that was her favorite toy and started playing with it. 

What had started as one supply cache among many had become _his_ spot.  It had also accumulated a lot of stuff salvaged from dumpsters that wasn’t strictly necessary, or even helpful, for his survival.  There were three cardboard boxes full of blankets and related warm things, two boxes full of futuristic-looking gadgets, one box full of miscellaneous items, and one box full of collapsed boxes. 

His handlers would not approve of the inefficiency, but they weren’t here to stop him. 

James set down the box of kittens.  He picked out the largest of the collapsed boxes, unfolded it, and started lining it with blankets. The kittens were so tiny and fragile-looking, he wanted to make sure they were safe, and there were enough of them that if they scattered in several directions he couldn’t do that.

He moved them into the larger box one at a time, paying careful attention to how much pressure he was applying to hold them.  They squeaped and mewed through the whole process.  He dropped in a matchless sock for them to play with and then started searching through his gadget boxes. 

_Need a phone that still works…yes!  Still connected to a data plan and everything._ He found the browser on the cracked-screen smartphone and googled ‘how to take care of baby cats’.  


	17. Chapter 17

“Are you freaking kidding me? I _told_ you not to touch my coffee,” said Kurosaki. 

“Whoa whoa whoa, you eat my Cheetos and then falsely accuse me of drinking your coffee?” replied Falters.

“Don’t even. This is the third time it’s happened! And I know it isn’t Jepsen or Chang because I was just in a meeting with them,” said Kurosaki. “And I didn’t have anything to do with your Cheetos.” 

“Well _someone_ ate _all_ of my Cheetos, and if it wasn’t you it was probably someone giving you a report, which means they ate my Cheetos _right in front of you_ and you didn’t stop them.” 

“Riiiight, because I’m supposed to memorize which snack bags belong to which people, even though they don’t have names on them.  Unlike my coffee, which _did_ have my name on it.”

* * *

Ninochka licked James’ fingers, which were the same shade of orange as her snout.  Hopefully the disappearance of the snacks and coffee would distract the CIA agents while they investigated each other, giving him more margin for error.  The kittens were settled for now, which meant he could spend time on surveillance. James looked through a scope, detached from its rifle.  Rogers and the guy with wings were standing in the kitchen area of Rogers’ apartment; Rogers was wearing the fuzzy socks James had left for him, and James felt the deep satisfaction of a well-executed mission.  Their body language suggested they were waiting for something.

The soldier had read enough snippets of history books and biographies to be thoroughly convinced that Rogers wasn’t a threat to most of the population.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat.

For whatever reason, people liked to talk about the Winter Soldier.  News, blogs, random conversations—he’d even seen a comedy sketch of someone pretending to be him, using some sort of thick accent James didn’t recognize.  Much of it was incomprehensible—particularly when they attributed desires and motivations to him—but certain things he understood perfectly.  Dangerous, threat to national security, insane, should be locked up, should be punished, should be put down. 

Most terrifying were the people who said he should receive psychiatric care. 

James didn’t know what Rogers wanted to do to him, but none of the options were good. And that was assuming Rogers would act like a stranger; according to numerous sources, the soldier had attacked his commanding officer.  Just thinking about the appropriate level of punishment had made the world collapse in on him and constrict around his chest; when he regained awareness the sun had moved noticeably. 

Rogers and his companion suddenly turned their heads to look at the apartment door, and Rogers walked over to open it.  The girl who walked through tugged at the soldier’s brain.  He had a sense of being alone in the dark and cold and then brushing against a warm hand, and intertwining fingers with someone else as lost as he was.  The girl glided across the room like it was a dance floor and sat down on the couch.

She had red hair. _Long or short, wavy, curly, straight, but always red…what am I even talking about?_

_“Give people one or two distinctive traits to latch onto, and it’s easier to walk unnoticed later with your hair stuffed in a hat.”_  

He knew her. He didn’t know who she was, but he _knew_ her. 

* * *

Natasha was here to discuss a complicated topic, about which she had a lot of complicated feelings, most of them painful.  In spite of that, there was a warmth spreading from her chest outward. 

Natasha didn’t need trust for friendship.  She appreciated the company of people she didn’t trust, and she cared about the wellbeing of people who didn’t trust her.  However, friends with whom she also shared mutual trust were precious beyond words, and made her feel like she’d finally come in from the cold. Clint, Sharon, Maria, Steve, Sam, and now Pepper were the home she hadn’t thought she could have.

Natasha didn’t need trust for friendship, but she appreciated it.  So when she smiled at Sam and Steve it felt less like pulling on a persona and more like letting something bubble up to the surface.

Natasha spread herself across the entire length of the couch, consciously delighting in the fact that the worst-case scenario was a mild verbal complaint.  Sam took the armchair and Steve pulled up a kitchen chair. Alyosha would have just sat on her, or maybe picked her up so he could be the bottom of the cuddle pile, if he were here.  If he remembered her.

Except his name wasn’t actually Alyosha, which was what she was here to discuss. 

She glanced at Steve’s feet.

“Nice socks. Any relevant details that didn’t make it into the Dickensian text you sent me?”  One side of Natasha’s mouth quirked up in a smile. _Always important to tease your friends._   “You know my phone had to split it up into nine messages…”

“Only nine? He sent me _eighteen_ separate texts,” said Sam. 

Steve blushed. Natasha let her half-smirk expand into a symmetric grin. 

“Anyway, you know what Bucky used to be like, _you_ know Soviet brainwashing, and I’m here to supply moral support and common sense,” said Sam, pointing to Steve and Natasha respectively. 

“Hey!  We have—Natasha has common sense,” Steve protested.

“Don’t be so sure about that. People with common sense don’t try to take on a decades-old conspiracy with just two friends as backup.” Natasha looked pointedly at Sam.

“At least I know what common sense looks like, which puts me one up on Steve according to his stories about him and Bucky.” 

“There’s a difference between not having any common sense and occasionally choosing to ignore it,” said Steve.  “Anyway, we need to figure out how to convince Bucky to come to us, or at least identify anything that might scare him off so we can avoid it.” 

_Better get the scary part out of the way._  

“There is something…I was able to confirm.  The KGB’s methods involve a lot of memory modification, including planted memories. So sometimes I remember something, and I can’t tell whether it actually happened.”  Natasha looked directly at Steve.  “Odessa wasn’t the first time I encountered the Winter Soldier.” 

There were a lot of details she was leaving out.  The fact that for most memories it became easier to tell once the withdrawal symptoms from her ‘medication’ wore off.  That fact that she trusted her memories of the soldier with no name enough to try to rescue him, multiple times. 

The fact that in every dream and every half-formed memory of her escape from the KGB he was by her side, right up until he wasn’t. 


	18. Chapter 18

“So you have memories of what he was like while brainwashed, assuming they’re reliable,” said Sam.

He looked at Steve, probably expecting him to say something.  After a couple of seconds Sam continued talking.

“That could actually be really useful.  According to the file they damaged his frontal lobes to try and make him easier to deal with, which can cause personality changes.  Having an idea of what he’s like now—is there a way to figure out how likely a memory is to be real?” 

“I can usually figure out if my brain made up the memory.  The hard part is telling the difference between things that were carefully planted and things that happened.” 

_Pretty sure the tickle fight was real._

_Not so sure it’s what Steve needs to hear about right now._

Natasha didn’t discuss her past with most people, but this was to help two of her friends, so there was nothing she couldn’t unbury if she so chose. 

“I was twelve when I first met him.  He didn’t have a name so I made one up—Alexei, though I always just called him Alyosha.” 

_Natasha’s cheeks were hot with shame as she shuffled into the dining hall, toward a table set apart from the rest.  She’d gotten a teacher angry with her, and it didn’t matter that he was being unfair, she was supposed to be able to_ handle _people.  Now she wasn’t allowed to have lunch; instead she got to watch everyone else eat, while they watched her sit miserably with the other screw-ups._

_One of the other students caught her eye.  Natasha thought he was very old, at least seventeen, maybe even forty.  He picked up a bread roll off his plate.  His eyes flicked rapidly between the instructors in the room, and when they all looked away simultaneously he gave the roll an underhand toss.  Natasha caught it, and covertly took bites when the instructors wouldn’t notice._  

“They put him in the same training program as me; that lasted for a few months before he disappeared without any explanation.  A couple years later myself and several other agents were assigned a mission alongside him.” Natasha smiled ironically. “I was excited to see my friend again, tried to ask him where he’d been, until I realized he didn’t remember me.”

_Part of being a good operative was understanding your own limitations._

_Natasha stopped reaching for the knife embedded in the wall and walked toward a nearby chair.  Vertical enhancement in hand, she turned around to see Alyosha pulling the knife out._

_“Stupid tall people.”_

_“Sorry, what was that?  I couldn’t hear you all the way down there.”_  

“The mission went wrong and the two of us did most of the salvaging, so I guess our handlers decided we worked well together.  We were assigned more joint missions.” 

_“So what you’re saying is, in addition to terrible posture, your style of dancing is useless without another person involved?”  Natasha smirked impishly.  “Seems pretty clear that ballet is superior.”_

_“Sure, if you’re a loner who can’t make any friends.  Also my dancing has lifts,” said Alyosha._

_“My dancing also has lifts, silly,” said Natasha._

_“Yes, but my lifts involve more spinning, which makes them_ _better.”_   

* * *

Steve had too many thoughts and emotions tumbling through his brain to process any of them. Hydra had infiltrated the KGB just like it infiltrated SHIELD; Natasha worked for the KGB, and Hydra dragged Bucky along with them after the war.  Intellectually, it wasn’t surprising that they had done missions together.  Emotionally though, Steve wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. 

Natasha spread out memories of infiltration, bait and trap, distraction and predator, of befriending Bucky, of befriending him again when he forgot her, of befriending him every time he forgot her.  Something about her stories seemed vulnerable and intimate, and Steve cycled between feeling protective of Natasha, protective of Bucky, honored that Natasha was sharing this with him, irritated that she hadn’t told him relevant information about his best friend earlier, glad that Bucky hadn’t been completely alone, and pettily jealous that someone else was Bucky’s most important person. Intermixed into all of this was deep affection for Bucky and a sense of having a shared secret with Natasha because of the common friendship. 

It was also occurring to him how little he had considered Natasha’s past and what she’d been through. He’d read her SHIELD file, but apparently there was a big difference between seeing phrases like ‘neural programming’ and ‘repeat assassin’ in emotionless print and hearing his friend casually mention things like obedience conditioning and live-target training. 

She’d always seemed well-balanced and cheerful; he hadn’t thought to take a closer look. Then again, he worked pretty hard to seem well-balanced and cheerful, and while his ghosts were much more benign, if he was honest with himself he would probably do the same in Natasha’s position. 

One thing was clear though. Hydra had _hurt_ his friends, again and again, as though it didn’t even matter.  Steve would do anything and everything to stop them, to eradicate them from existence so it wouldn’t happen ever again.  To his friends or anyone else. 

* * *

The girl was facing away from the window, so James couldn’t read her lips.  The girl was also doing most of the talking, so that he couldn’t even infer what she was saying from the responses.  If he wanted to know anything useful, he was going to have to get within auditory range of the conversation. 

The list of commands Ninochka understood was growing larger. 

“Ninochka, don’t follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ballet training involves a lot more emphasis on posture than social swing dancing. Ballet lifts tend to look floaty, swing lifts tend to be more spinny.   
> (Here is a video of 40s swing dancing, also fanart of Bucky and Natasha: http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/88055993443/luenititan-saeto15-thegeminisage-imagine)
> 
> Something I've been meaning to say for a while: I don't usually respond to comments because social back-and-forth is not one of my strong suits, but I see them and really appreciate them and reread them when I need writing encouragement. You guys are wonderful.


	19. Chapter 19

Skye poked her head into May’s office. 

“Heyyyy, wanted to discuss something with you, is this a good time?” 

“Good enough,” said May.

“So it turns out the Russian government is sensible and doesn’t keep its top secret files on systems connected to the Internet.  In order to get the KGB’s files on what Hydra was doing there, I’m going to have to get physical access to one of their servers,” said Skye. “But, on the bright side, once we get the files decrypting them should be no problem, ‘cause older encryptions tend to have small keyspaces compared to current computing capabilities, meaning we can just brute-force it…” 

Skye trailed off as she caught herself giving more technical details than May needed.

“Yeaahh, summary is decryption shouldn’t be hard,” said Skye. 

_Forgot that James is my only computer science buddy.  Oh well._  

“I don’t suppose there are any systems we can get to quickly without cloaking?” asked May.

“Sure, if there’s someone on the Index with powers related to increasing luck, or spreading mass stupidity…” said Skye. 

May rested her chin on her hands.  “We don’t have the spare resources to do a long-term infiltration.” 

“There is something else we could do,” said Skye.  “Okay, so, I know this hacker who can get us the files; her ability to get physical access to high security areas is kind of legendary.  Problem is, when I say she can get us the files, what I mean is I can convince her to leak them publicly.” 

May considered for a moment.

“I’ll talk to Coulson to make sure it doesn't mess up any of his plans.  But as far as I’m concerned, publicly leaked is a lot better than completely unknown.” 

* * *

Hanging off the side of the apartment building, James shifted position so that his head was below the window frame and then locked the joints on his cybernetic arm so he could hold himself up without expending energy.  

Conveniently, the window was already cracked open, letting the conversation drift through.

“It could go a lot of ways.” The girl’s voice seemed deeper than he expected, although he wasn’t sure what it sounded like before. “I was a mess, after I escaped. Did a lot of stupid stuff; there’s a reason I ended up on SHIELD’s radar.  I’m not even quite sure if I was trying to scare my old handlers away, or provoke them into sending someone after me.” 

“Someone?” said Steve.

James felt an almost physical pain at the sound of Steve’s voice. 

“Pretty childish, right? I thought if he saw me he’d—not remember, exactly, but recognize…give me time to talk him out of it,” said the girl.  “Like we were the heroes in a fairytale or something.” 

There was silence for a few minutes.  James felt like he was missing something important, or like he was in trouble for something he didn’t understand. 

“What were you like, before? Maybe we can compare the differences, to have a better idea of what he’s like now?” said a third voice, presumably the guy with wings. 

“Before…” the girl gave a humorless chuckle, “I was a child.  There wasn’t a before.” 

* * *

<skye> Hi, I was hoping to get your help with something

<squirrel_girl> depends on what it is

<skye> hydra’s files from shield say they infiltrated other organizations

<skye> I want to leak **all** of hydra’s info

<squirrel_girl> sounds fun

<squirrel_girl> they say which organizations?

<skye> I know the kgb’s on the list, still working on the rest

<squirrel_girl> russia still hasn’t declassified kgb files, even though they claim they shut it down

<squirrel_girl> this is gonna take physical access.  I’ll talk to Tippy-Toe

<skye> not familiar with tippy-toe.  another hacktavist?

<squirrel_girl> something like that ;)

* * *

Kurosaki was doing a sweep of the building facing Rogers’ apartment when she found a puppy in one of the rooms.  A small, black and white ball of fluff that perfectly matched the description of Yasha’s companion, nose faintly orange, playing underneath a window that offered a perfect view of Rogers’ living room. 

_Oh. Shit._  

* * *

“I’m still not sure what to put in the note.  There are a million things I want to say to him, but every time I try to put it into words it just…we kinda had a lot of nonverbal communication,” said Steve. “I would pass notes with doodles on them, he expressed most of the important stuff with touching, and about half of our conversations were incomprehensible to other people because of all the inside jokes.” 

Fragments of memories clicked into place, and James’ eyes felt warm as he realized who Steve was talking about. 

“I can write speeches that inspire a nation, but I can’t write to my best friend without drawing a cartoon or referencing some stupid incident in fourth grade he doesn’t remember anymore.” 

James suddenly hated that he couldn’t remember. 

“So draw something,” said Natasha.  “If that’s what works for you, use it.” 

“Maybe try telling us what you want him to know,” said the guy with wings. 

There was a pause.

“I would tell him…that I want to help; that no matter what, I’m with him ‘til—“ 

There was a loud crash of a door being kicked in. 

“Get down!” shouted an unfamiliar voice. 

“Chang, what’s going on?” said Steve. 

“There’s been a security breach. You need to come with me, and we need to stay _away_ from the windows.”

_What—?_

Vanya and the others knew about Ninochka, and James had just left her in the best spot for a sniper trying to go after Rogers. 

He started descending the building, and tried to think clearly about what a CIA team would do with a small dog.  He needed to find Ninochka as quickly as possible, and then get the hell out of there.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to make it impossible for someone to steal your information remotely, you can sacrifice convenience for security by air-gapping your servers (disconnecting them from the internet).   
> Nuclear codes don't go anywhere near the internet for this reason. Also, if you're messing around with experimental Ultron-caliber AI stuff, you should be doing it on an air-gapped system (that ISN'T connected to robot-manufacturing equipment) so the AI can't escape into the world.   
> In related things, there will be a very long author's note when this series catches up to the events of Age of Ultron. 
> 
> 'Keyspace' is a short way of saying 'every possible key that could exist for this encryption scheme'. For example, the Caesar cipher (where you have a number that you add to each letter of the message, for instance if the number is 3 then A's become D's, B's become E's, etc.) has 26 distinct keys in its keyspace. Cryptanalytically speaking this is a tiny tiny keyspace, because while trying to decrypt a message using every possible key would be tedious with pen and paper, it's really fast on a computer. 
> 
> 'Brute-force' can be a noun or a verb ("brute-force something" or "use brute-force to solve something") and it refers to exhaustively trying every option. One of the goals when designing an encryption is to make sure that, if your adversary finds out what cipher you're using but not what key you're using, it will take waaaaaaaay too long (i.e. centuries) to decrypt your messages/files/whatever using brute force. How long brute-force takes depends on how fast your computer (or cluster of computers) is, so as computing technology improves encryption schemes with bigger and bigger keyspaces have to be made in order for information to be secure. This also means that encryptions which used to be effectively uncrackable (at least via ciphertext-only attacks) can stop being secure. 
> 
> I feel the need to point out that from Skye's perspective, her friendship with Bucky consists almost entirely of mutual info-dumping about special interests. (From Bucky's perspective, it consists of mutual exchange of important survival skills.) 
> 
> Squirrel Girl (aka Doreen Green) is a comics character who can talk to squirrels:   
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_Girl  
> She canonically defeated Doctor Doom by having him swarmed by squirrels, and recent comics made her a computer science major. Tippy-Toe is her sidekick, also a literal squirrel.   
> For the purposes of this fic she's a member of the Rising Tide, and "her ability to get physical access to high security areas" involves squirrels carrying USB drives with the appropriate software loaded on them.


	20. Chapter 20

“We have Rogers. Repeat, we have Rogers. We’re escorting him out of the building now,” Jepsen’s voice crackled over the comm. 

Kurosaki moved quickly as she swept the building, working to balance noticing important details with not getting distracted by irrelevant ones. 

“Team one, what’s your status?” said Jepsen. 

“Searching the facing building,” said Kurosaki. 

Speaking gave away her position if Yasha happened to be nearby, but coordinating their efforts was crucial.

“Team two, what’s your status?” said Jepsen. 

The comms were silent.

“Team two?”

“We’re sweeping the main building, but Falters is unresponsive,” said Agent Garcia. 

_Crap. Crap crap crap._ If Falters got himself killed, Kurosaki’s last words to him would be about her stupid coffee.

“What was his last position?” she said. 

“Checking the outside of the building, approaching the northwest corner,” said Garcia. “Our closest agent can get there in twenty seconds.” 

“I’m on the ground floor, I can get there in ten.”  Kurosaki broke into a sprint. 

She almost got hit by a car crossing the street but made it to the corner within eight seconds. She unholstered her gun as she rounded the corner.  Then she froze.

A man with the right height and build to be the Winter Soldier was pinning Falters to the wall, left hand wrapped around his throat.  The man turned to look at Kurosaki; a scarf covered the lower half of his face, but she could see his eyes flick towards her gun.  He moved his right arm so that the gun he had been shoving into Falters’ ribs was now pointing at her. 

They both watched each other, waiting to see what the other would do. 

Falters was still pinned by Yasha’s left arm, which was reportedly strong enough to tear people’s throats open.  And between an ordinary agent and an extensively engineered supersoldier, Kurosaki was the one who would bleed out first if she and Yasha fired.  _Okay, no pressure, just a life or death situation that depends on me not screwing up._

“Where.  Is.  My dog.”  Judging by Yasha’s tone, he’d already asked Falters repeatedly. 

“Where you left her, unless she wandered off.  We didn’t touch her,” said Kurosaki. 

They’d been too busy making sure Rogers wasn’t dead. 

No one moved. If Kurosaki lowered her gun, Yasha could easily kill both of them.  _And he’s probably thinking something similar._   Bryan would want her to do something clever to keep Yasha in one spot and alert the rest of the team.  Kurosaki was more interested in making sure Falters made it out alive. 

“Okay, we both want to make it out of here without any casualties,” she said, really hoping it was true. “How about you let go of Falters, and then we’ll just—stay here, until you get out of sight.”

_Oh crap I hope this works._   Kurosaki was trained in a lot of skills; hostage negotiation was not one of them. 

Yasha nodded, and slowly took his hand off of Falters’ throat.  He started backing away, keeping his gun trained on Kurosaki. Falters edged towards Kurosaki with obvious relief. 

Kurosaki was so focused on Falters and Yasha, she didn’t notice the incoming team two agent until he walked into her peripheral vision.  She kept her eyes on the Soldier, who had just visibly tensed up.

“What’s going on?” said the agent, whose name Kurosaki couldn’t remember. 

“What’s going on is no one is shooting right now, got it?”  Kurosaki used the calmest voice she could manage. Yasha continued to back up.

“Oh my God, that’s him,” the agent whispered.  “Hey! Don’t move!” 

There was a flicker of motion at the edge of Kurosaki’s vision.  She glanced over to see the agent pointing his gun, finger on the trigger.

Two gunshots snapped her attention back to Yasha. 

By the time she started thinking again she had yanked Falters around the corner and out of the line of fire.  The two of them watched the third agent fire at Yasha while using the same corner as cover.

“Damn it!” said the agent. “He got away.”

* * *

“Okay, we’re almost out,” said Chang. 

His heart was pounding in his chest.  He and Jepsen were good—that’s why they were assigned to this job—but the Winter Soldier bordered on mythical.  The combat skills and physical enhancements they could deal with; it was the Soldier’s tactical creativity that was the problem.  Hydra officers would bang their heads against a problem for months, declare it impossible, and then someone would defrost the Winter Soldier and have it done by Tuesday. 

They were almost out, but it was still entirely possible for the Soldier to outmaneuver Jepsen and Chang and complete his mission. 

“Bring the cars around,” Jepsen said into her comm. 

Hopefully, multiple vehicles pulling up to different building exits would provide some distraction. Chang glanced back at Rogers and his friends to discover that one of them was missing.  _Crap._

“Where’s the girl?”

* * *

Natasha flowed behind a cluster of people moving along the sidewalk, posture relaxed and casual. It was unlikely that she could help the current situation very much; Steve and Bucky could take care of themselves physically, and she didn’t have the background information to play the agents very effectively.  Especially since she wasn’t done creating a new cover. 

Besides, she had a lunch to get to. 

* * *

James whistled for Ninochka. He could hear the CIA teams coming up the stairs; a few seconds before he would have taken evasive action, the stomping of tactical boots was joined by the patter of puppy feet. He bent his knees and Ninochka leapt into his arms. 

He shifted her weight onto one arm, and used the other to swing himself out the nearest window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to address this more in future chapters, but if any of you are wondering, "wait, what is the point of Bucky covering his face if the Bros probably already talked to a sketch artist" and want to know *now* here you go:   
> Forensic sketches vary in quality; the more witnesses who see the Winter Soldier's face, the higher the chance that the CIA will end up with a high-quality sketch. The quality of the sketch is limited by both how well the witness remembers the face and by how good the sketch artist is. Humans are generally much better at recognizing faces than we are at remembering exactly what was going on visually/geometrically/etc., so it's a lot easier to say "ehhhh, something's off" than to say what correction needs to be made. The sketch artist's job is to make useful communication happen anyway.   
> There's a good chance that the CIA has relatively accurate info on Bucky's most prominent features (jawline and brow bone, probably) and shaky info on everything else.


	21. Chapter 21

“What the hell was that?” said Chang as soon as they were all in the car. 

Jepsen pushed the gas pedal as far as possible without spinning out.  

“I was trying to make sure my friend was okay,” said Captain Rogers. 

The sudden disappearance of the redhead was worrying, but Rogers running after her helped no one.

Chang glared at Rogers. Rogers glared back defiantly, as though he were some kid dealing with an unfair authority figure and not a war hero who just endangered lives by acting like an idiot. 

“That’s _our_ job,” said Jepsen. 

“Yeah, well, my friend doesn’t know you.  Introducing yourselves and explaining the situation would’ve taken time.” 

“What part of ‘there’s been a security breach, we need to get out of here’ was unclear to her? Because I thought I was being clear,” said Chang. 

The staring contest resumed for a few seconds. 

“She doesn’t have a good history with people in suits,” said Rogers. 

“So that means you should just run off, with no backup, no plan, no explanation, and make a dozen agents run around like idiots, risking their lives trying to protect your stupid behind?” 

Chang almost ended his sentence with a different word; based on Rogers’ eyebrow twitching upward slightly, he caught the hesitation. 

“Don’t forget announcing his position to the Winter Soldier,” Jepsen said in her you-suck-but-I’m-being-polite voice. 

“Right, let’s not forget _shouting_ your friend’s name at the _top of your lungs_ ,” said Chang.

“So, what, I’m just supposed to abandon Becky to save my own life?  Because that’s not an option,” said Steve. 

_Ah, so that’s what he was shouting._   Rogers’ yelling had been loud, but a little indistinct.

“You’re supposed to work _with_ us so you don’t endanger even more lives,” said Chang. 

Rogers looked like he was going to reply, but instead said nothing for the rest of the ride.

* * *

“You must be Sharon.”

“And you must be Pepper.”

“The one and only.” Pepper extended her hand with a smile. 

Sharon shook it and smiled back. 

“Right this way,” said Pepper, leading Sharon into an elevator.  “This is the easiest place to make sure we’re not being spied on. Jarvis monitors for intruders and bugs; he reports only to Tony, and Tony reports to me.  So: classified information, broken international laws, that one embarrassing thing you did in third grade—all of it’s safe to discuss.” 

“Jarvis is the AI?” asked Sharon. 

“Yes,” said Pepper.

“I don’t know,” said Sharon. “The incident at Mattie’s birthday party was pretty embarrassing.  Are you sure no one could hack Jarvis?” 

“Jarvis is capable of learning new cognitive skills, and passes the Turing Test with flying colors. Even if they made it past the firewall, it would be like hacking a human brain,” said Pepper. 

“Which Hydra figured out how to do,” said Sharon. 

Pepper hesitated in her stride ever so slightly. 

“If Hydra found a way to adapt their technique to work on Jarvis, it would still take a few days of uninterrupted access.  During which time Tony would notice something was wrong,” said Pepper. 

“Given Mr. Stark’s use habits, it is unlikely that I could go offline for five minutes without him noticing,” said a smooth male voice.  “I would also like to point out that while I am connected to the Internet, all inputs are carefully sanitized before being processed.” 

They stepped out of the elevator and into a room where Agent Maria Hill was sitting at a table.

“Agent Hill,” Sharon said with a nod when they were close enough. 

“Former agent. And you can call me Maria. I heard you were the first to pull your gun after Steve made his speech,” said Maria. 

“Well, technically I was the second; I pulled mine because Rumlow pointed his at a computer tech. Heard you were by Steve’s side throughout the whole…incident.” 

“Metaphorically speaking,” said Maria.  “You’re allowed to sit down, you know.” 

“Right,” said Sharon, hoping her smile covered some of the awkwardness. 

She and Pepper sat down.

“So, uh, how’s working for Stark?” asked Sharon. 

“It has its pros and cons,” said Maria. 

“Tony has the amazing skill of somehow being a complete sweetheart and a complete jerk at the same time,” said Pepper. 

“This though,” Maria pointed at the windows, “This is a major pro.  Blocks the sun no matter where you’re sitting.”

“Oh?” said Sharon.

“Polarized glass, a network of embedded electrodes, cameras, and computer vision algorithms to figure out what’s a face and what’s a sandwich,” said Pepper. 

Sharon glanced up to see an opaque patch where the sun should be. 

“Did Natasha say when she was coming?” asked Maria. 

“Oh!  Right.  She texted me to say she would be late,” said Sharon. 

* * *

James put Ninochka down and opened the kittens’ box to check on them. 

_Aw, crap.  Literally._ Somehow the kittens had managed to defecate everywhere _except_ the litter box.  Which was not to say they had ignored the litter box—half the litter had been spilled over the side of the tray, and one of the kittens was still playing in it. 

James noted that said troublemaker was black and grey striped, with a particular squiggle above its hind legs that didn’t match any of the other kittens. 

A couple of the other kittens looked up at him and mewed, and the rest seemed to be asleep. Something seemed off though. _I think they were louder earlier._   He picked up one of the mewing ones—black with no tail. It moved around sluggishly, and when it pushed against him with its paw the force was almost imperceptible.

Panic rising, James put the kitten down and grabbed the smartphone he’d used earlier. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diarrhea is dangerous for very small kittens, as it can cause them to rapidly become dehydrated. If worrying about the fate of the kittens for weeks sounds like less fun than getting spoiled on story that hasn't been posted yet, here's a handy link: http://voidstarfanfic.tumblr.com/post/126116475996/strays-spoilers-obviously-dont-click-if-you
> 
> An AI passes the Turing Test if it can convince a human that it is also a human via conversation, which Jarvis is definitely capable of. (In plot-irrelevant things, Tony and Jarvis probably got up to ridiculous shenanigans while testing that for the first time. I'm imagining lots of prank-calls.) 
> 
> Sanitizing inputs means checking inputs to make sure they won't cause the computer to do something it shouldn't, either accidentally or through malicious intent. Here's a concrete (also humorous) example of why that's important:   
> https://xkcd.com/327/  
> ^The person adding students to the database probably typed up the command to add a new entry and then copy-pasted in the student's name*; because the name included a single quotation mark, the computer thought that meant it was the end of the name, so it went back to interpreting everything as commands to follow, and then the semicolon made the computer think that was the end of the "add student" command. So when it got to the "DROP TABLE Students;" text it obediently followed what it thought was a command, erasing the table with all the student data.   
> If the student's name had been put through a program that removed quotation marks and semicolons from text, and the output from that had been used in the "add student" command, everything would have been fine.   
> *Or they copied the student's name into a program that shows the user a shiny-looking GUI while using SQL under the hood to make everything work. 
> 
> "Computer vision" refers to the entire field of programming computers to get useful information from image data, everything from facial recognition software to making a robot with a camera that can avoid obstacles.


	22. Chapter 22

“No, that’s not what I…agh.” Fitz grasped for words and came up empty, like always. 

Skye folded her hands behind her back and looked at him with a pleasantly mild expression, because Skye was Nice and a Good Friend, and Good Friends did their best not to show how useless and annoying you were. 

Fitz jabbed angrily at the empty space in his head where the word he wanted was supposed to be. He knew it existed, he knew the meaning attached to it, he could almost hear the rhythm of someone saying it…

“It’s, um, it’s…it starts with an ‘M’,” said Fitz. 

“Material properties?” suggested Jemma. 

“No, that’s not it,” Fitz said irritably. 

“Mass?” said Jemma.

“No!  Shush, I can’t think.” 

Fitz rubbed his forehead, and tried not to think about whatever face Skye was probably making. He knew that no one else could see Simmons. 

“Molecular—molecular orbital. That’s it.  The…thing, that we were talking about, happens because of the shape of the molecular orbital,” said Fitz.  “You see, it…um…” 

_Not again.  I just—I just figured out the last one, why—_

“Never mind, I can’t _think_ with you just standing there looking at me like I’m—just never mind,” said Fitz. 

He left the room before he could explode further at people who weren’t doing anything wrong.

* * *

Skye watched Fitz leave the room, mad at herself for upsetting him but not knowing what she did wrong.

Ward was an evil traitor, Simmons left, Coulson was always busy, James was dealing with brain damage and massive amounts of trauma, Fitz was dealing with brain damage and trauma—the only functional relationship Skye had was with May.  May was great, but Skye needed more than one friend she could talk to without worrying about hurting them by accident.

“Hey, how’s it going?” said Trip as he walked into the room. 

_Okay, make that two functional relationships.  I still wouldn’t mind having more._  

“Oh, you know, just accidentally drove Fitz up a wall and I still don’t know what to do differently next time—how are you doing?” said Skye. 

“I’m doing okay, just finished doing inventory,” said Trip. 

He gave her a look she recognized as inviting further discussion of what was on her mind. Skye debated whether to take the invitation. 

“I can’t stop thinking—if I’d just let Ward die, then he wouldn’t have been able to hurt Fitz,” said Skye. “All of this…stuff, the lost words, not being able to do the things he wants—it’s my fault.” 

“No, Skye, listen to me: that’s all on Ward.  He tried to kill them, he’s responsible,” said Trip. 

“I guess,” said Skye.

Intellectually she knew he was right, but it sure as hell didn’t feel that way. 

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone,” said Trip.  “First time I lost a teammate, I beat myself up for weeks thinking about what I could have done differently.  Eventually my grandfather got wind of it, and he, uh—he told me stories.  About the war.”

Skye looked at him, not sure exactly how to respond. 

“He doesn’t like talking about the war.  Pranks and shenanigans back at base,” Trip shrugged, “he’ll talk your ears off.  But battles—and the times after a battle when you find out just how loud an empty space can be—suddenly the weather becomes _real_ fascinating, know what I mean?” 

Skye thought about how May hated being called ‘The Cavalry’. 

“Yeah, I think I know exactly what you mean.” 

“He told me about soldiers, civilians, a fourteen-year-old resistance fighter in France, Bucky Barnes…he said there’s always something you could have done differently if you’d been psychic,” said Trip.  “Point is, you’re in good company.” 

_…I promised James I wouldn’t tell anyone._   It had seemed like the best move at the time, but now Skye wasn’t so sure. 

“So does that mean we’re as cool as the Howling Commandos?”  _When in doubt, make stupid jokes._ “We could get Coulson a tie-pin with a star on it.” 

Trip smiled. “He would probably really like that, actually.” 

“It exists somewhere on the Internet.  Heck, there’s probably even an Official Captain America tie-pin somewhere,” said Skye.

Skye’s phone started ringing; she didn’t recognize the number.  “Hello?” 

“Skye?  Are you—there’s an emergency, you said to call this number…” 

“Wait, James? What’s going on?” said Skye.

“Medical emergency; sick kittens, symptoms match dehydration.  I administered water to all patients; most are recovering, but one of them won’t swallow,” said James. 

“Kittens?” said Skye.

Trip suddenly looked interested. 

“Affirmative,” said James.

_…I thought you were going to say Hydra showed up._  

“Have you tried taking them to the vet?” asked Skye. 

“…No?” 

“Okay, try taking them to the vet,” said Skye.  “Hang on, if you tell me where you are I can look up the nearest thingamajig.”

Trip was grinning in a way that said Skye was going to need to come up with excuses for why he couldn’t visit the kitties. 

* * *

Fitz heard footsteps approaching.

“Go away, Skye, I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“I’m not Skye,” said May.

Fitz looked up from where he was sitting on the floor.  May sat down next to him. 

For several minutes neither of them said anything. 

“Sometimes people talk too much,” said May.  “I picked my office because it blocks outside noise well.  You’re welcome any time you like.” 


	23. Chapter 23

“Anyway, I’m still trying to get it off the ground.  The ads help, but a lot of people still hear ‘Hydra asset’ and assume they volunteered. Convincing someone who’s being rejected by their friends and family to trust a complete stranger is, shockingly enough, somewhat difficult,” said Pepper. 

“Are you planning to help all of Hydra’s involuntary assets, or just the ones used for human experimentation?” asked Sharon. 

Natasha’s relaxed exterior didn’t so much as ripple as she focused her attention on Pepper’s response.

“I…I’m not quite sure.” Pepper spoke more quietly than before.  “The people who were experimented on—it’s really clear-cut, and I know exactly how they feel. The people who were made to work for Hydra—some of it gets fuzzier.  Some of them have very high body counts.  Body counts that include Tony’s parents.” 

The reports were fuzzy as to the details of that mission, but perfectly clear about which operative was thawed to carry it out.  Natasha would have to have a conversation with Tony and Pepper discussing how many people, exactly, were killed by Stark weapons before they caught Obadiah Stane.

“So you have to ask, if someone worked for Hydra under threat of being killed, is it ethical for them to kill others to save their own life,” said Maria. 

“Exactly,” said Pepper.

“Which begs the follow-up question—just how heroic does a human have to be, to be worthy of compassion?” said Maria. 

A flick of eyes told Natasha that Maria was at least partly thinking of her.  Sharon was visibly conflicted.  Pepper considered for a moment. 

“Compassion isn’t the same thing as hundreds of dollars worth of therapy and lawyer services. Your point still stands—but I’m going to prioritize helping the victims of experimentation,” said Pepper. “What that looks like exactly, I’m still figuring out.  Contrary to popular belief, Tony doesn’t actually have infinite cash, and a lot of it is going into efforts to stop Hydra’s most dangerous operatives.”

“And the sooner you stop them, the fewer good people get killed,” said Sharon. 

“You could always combine it with recruitment.  One of Garrett’s supersoldiers was obedient until someone rescued his son from Hydra’s custody—at which point he turned Garrett into a bloody, lifeless heap in about three seconds flat,” said Maria. 

Natasha let a predatory smile spread across her face.  There were some very good ways a recruitment effort could end. 

Pepper noticed Natasha’s smile, and Natasha basked in Pepper’s non-reaction.   _Mild, polite, sweet—but more than capable of killing when it’s appropriate._ A lesson Aldritch Killian learned the hard way.  There was a reason Natasha liked Pepper. 

“We should have a discussion with Tony about that later.  He’ll be twitchy about hiring anyone associated with Hydra, but having you screen the candidates will help with that a lot,” Pepper said to Maria.

There was a pause in the conversation that lasted for more than three seconds, so Natasha made an executive decision to change the topic. 

“So, Sharon, that thing you wanted to talk about…” 

“Right, that. I want to steal something without my boss having any reason to be suspicious,” said Sharon. “So, really, I want to hire someone to steal something for me while I’m off creating an airtight alibi.”

“CIA’s still twitchy about the whole ex-SHIELD thing?” said Maria. 

“Yep.” 

“Ludicrously high security?” asked Natasha. 

“Yep.”  

“Do I want to know what it is?” asked Pepper. 

“Not Stark Industries,” said Sharon. 

“Good, because that could’ve made for an awkward situation,” said Pepper. 

“It’s an experimental drug developed by one of SHIELD’s affiliates.”  Maria twitched at Sharon’s words.  “GH-120.”  Maria relaxed again. 

“How much volume and weight are we talking?” asked Natasha. 

“Just a small vial. Position it right in a padded bra and it won’t even show,” said Sharon. 

“I think I know someone who could position it arbitrarily in any bra and get away with it. We’d send her into all sorts of places, the guard would look right where she was hiding USB drives and other equipment and not notice a thing,” said Maria.  “She was a great asset to SHIELD, as were her assets.”

“Um, anyway, payment could get interesting.  I’d prefer to pay in consumable goods I can pretend to be buying for myself if anyone asks,” said Sharon. 

“So instead of thinking you paid for illicit services, your boss will think you eat a ridiculous quantity of gummy bears,” said Natasha. 

“That’s the plan,” said Sharon. 

“Okay, I accept,” said Natasha. 

“What?” said Sharon.

“For a year’s supply of gummy bears, ten more lunch dates, and you asking Steve out, I will get the GH-120 for you,” said Natasha. 

“Anything else?” asked Sharon, who looked a little bit stunned that her search for a thief had concluded so quickly. 

“Your aunt’s autograph wouldn’t hurt.”  Natasha grinned.

Pepper suddenly checked her phone; her face grew more concerned as she read the text. 

“Sorry, Tony took apart the microwave and did something inadvisable with the magnetron, I have to go,” said Pepper. 

She gathered up her jacket and purse and started to walk away when her phone rang.  Pepper answered it and kept walking.

“Tony, why did you think that was a good idea…you’re what?  Okay, the first aid kit is in the downstairs bathroom, top right of the cabinet…no, ground floor.  Listen, I—no, listen for a moment, I am at lunch with friends, and now I have to leave early because you…I told you not to do anything stupid while I’m busy, and I told you I was having lunch…yes, I really did tell you…” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A magnetron is the part of a microwave oven that generates the microwaves. Microwaves are a relatively low-frequency (or high-wavelength) form of electromagnetic radiation; they're higher-frequency than radio waves and lower-frequency than infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, or gamma radiation. When microwaves are applied to polar molecules (such as water), the molecules get jiggled; since temperature is basically a measure of "how jiggly are your molecules" that means they heat up. This heat then disperses to any nearby non-polar molecules, i.e. the other molecules in the food you're microwaving.


	24. Chapter 24

James hugged a smallish cardboard box to his chest as he walked down the sidewalk, Ninochka trailing behind him.  All of the kittens were inside—only one of them needed to go to the vet, but he was afraid the others might get sick while he was gone if he left them behind.

Usually passersby’s eyes slid over him without taking notice.  Now they lingered longer, flicking down to the box of kittens; the attention set alarms blaring in his head— _failure to blend in_ , _suspicious person_ , and _more witnesses_. He hated witnesses. They were not-threat, not-obstacle, not-power-abusing—they shouldn’t have to die.  They only died if he failed to be sneaky enough.

He tried very hard to be sneaky. 

James reached the animal hospital, and instinctively scanned the interior through the large front windows. Halfway through cataloging the places the pet owners could be hiding weapons and how lethal the pets would be if trained, his brain froze.  A man in a lab coat was casually leaning against the front desk, talking to the receptionist.  A blur of white appeared in James’ peripheral vision; a woman with a lab coat and a clipboard had just entered the front room. 

James wanted to run, but his muscles refused to move—except for his heart, which sent his pulse thudding quickly in his ears.  He struggled to breath against the tightness in his chest. 

One of the doctors glanced at James, and his body started moving on autopilot—break eye contact, walk away casually.  When he escaped the lab coats’ line of sight he slumped against the side of the building. There were no pictures behind his eyes, but his mind was seized by the idea of children playing roughly with a toy, only caring if they broke it because then Mom would be mad.

_Not their toy not their toy soldier-_

_Can’t go back can’t go back can’t go back—_

There was a muffled meow from inside the box. 

James didn’t know which kitten made the sound—but he knew that it wasn’t the orange one, the smallest in the litter, who hadn’t woken up no matter how hard he tried to drip water into its mouth.  It would never wake up at all if he didn’t go in. 

His bone hand shook. He shoved it against the door anyway and pushed through. 

* * *

“Sooo…this friend James of yours…”  Trip smiled brightly.

_Oh boy._   Skye had not realized before today that Trip was a cat person. 

“He’s a homeless guy I’m teaching how to program; he’s like ninety-something.  Um, he’s also a pretty private person, I don’t know how he’d feel about a stranger suddenly showing up to play with his pets…” said Skye. 

“You could ask him,” said Trip.  “It wouldn’t be sudden if he knew I was coming.” 

“I can ask—but don’t get your hopes up.  I didn’t even know he _had_ kittens until just now,” said Skye. 

Trip nodded. “Y’know, now that I think about it, getting a cat for the base isn’t a bad idea.  It could be good for stress, you know, make sure everyone gets healthy amounts of cuddling.” 

“Healthy amounts of cuddling?” Skye raised her eyebrows.

“Come on, girl, you know it’s good for your psychological state.”  Trip grinned.  “And cats don’t fly around the world on missions all the time.” 

“Ah, so you noticed that Coulson is my main source of hugs,” said Skye.  “Just so long as no one working here is allergic.”

Skye’s phone rang again.

“Someone’s popular,” said Trip. 

“Just clear the cat idea with May before bringing back a furball.”  Skye answered the phone.  “Hey, Mike.” 

“Hey, Skye. Listen, Ace was wondering if your friend James could come over again…”  

* * *

Steve stood stiffly while Chang and Jepsen talked to their superior.  Sam stood beside him. 

“So…was it just me or did Chang go out of his way not to swear at you?” said Sam. 

Steve almost rolled his eyes.  “Somehow Captain America: generically appealing propaganda symbol turned into Captain America: beacon of wholesomeness.  I didn’t swear in any of my public appearances because so many of my fans were little kids, and somehow people interpreted that as meaning _they_ couldn’t swear in front of _me_.”  

“People.”  Sam grinned. 

“You wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve met who have a completely different vocabulary when they think I’m out of earshot,” said Steve.

“They forgot about the supersoldier ears, didn’t they,” said Sam. 

“I’m never sure whether it’d be funnier to just keep listening, or react so I can see the look on their face when they realize I can hear them.”  Steve shook his head. “What do they think I’m going to do, faint?” 

“There was a Captain America movie; one of the other characters swore, and Cap was like ‘language!’”  Sam said the last word in an affronted tone of voice. “It ended up as one of those lines that got quoted a lot.” 

“Great,” said Steve.  “ I didn’t even—okay, when the other Howling Commandos got dragged into the publicity or politics side of things, I reminded them to watch their language, but that was it.  Kids watch the publicity stuff, and for _some_ reason politicians don’t _like_ it when you tell them to their face that their idea is the stupidest goddamn idea you’ve ever heard.” 

Sam laughed, and Steve found himself smiling despite the day’s events. 

“…don’t care, if he ran off you must’ve explained it badly…” 

Agent Bryan chewing out Chang and Jepsen caught Steve’s attention.  In no way was it their fault that he’d run off. The fact that he was annoyed at them for chasing Bucky away had nothing to do with unfair accusations.

“Excuse me, Agent Bryan, right?” said Steve, walking over.  “I just wanted to clarify something quickly.  Agents Chang and Jepsen did a perfectly adequate job explaining the whole protection detail thing; it’s just that I trained with the Army and fought as part of a team, so standing by and doing nothing while others risk their lives—it’s just not something I can do.  Like they say, doctors are the worst patients.”

“I…I appreciate you telling me that,” said Bryan.  “In the future, you’ll need to stay out of the line of fire.  And of course we’ll need to move you, now that the Winter Soldier knows where you live—“ 

“Excuse me?” Steve said in his best Captain voice.  “Hydra is a global operation involving hundreds of agents.  Look, I don’t mind you using me as bait, but I can’t drop my own efforts against them because you’re focused on one operative.”

Bryan was at a loss for words for a moment, and Steve caught a hint of mirth around Jepsen’s eyes.

“With all due respect, Captain, we have experience with this sort of situation,” said Bryan.

“With all due respect, I have experience punching Red Skull in the face,” said Steve. “I’m not exactly helpless.”

“I’m serious. We’ve all been through years of training, learning how to handle the problems that can’t be fixed with punching,” said Bryan. 

“You’re right, I don’t have CIA training.  Just a couple years of relevant field experience.”  _To sass, or not to sass? What the hell._ “Howling Commandos, also known as the world’s first anti-Hydra unit.  You might have heard of us.” 

“Yes, and technology has advanced since then.  He’s not going to sit in a trench with an MP40 waiting for you wander into range,” said Bryan.

Anger flashed through Steve and he barely kept himself from snapping _what do you know about trench warfare, you weren’t there_. 

“You mean technology like Hydra’s Tesseract-powered weapons, which my team adapted to immediately? Or do you mean like the Chitauri technology the other Avengers and I fought against in the Battle of New York?” said Steve.  “Incidentally, snipers have existed since the Revolutionary War.” 

Bryan opened his mouth but no sound came out.  Chang and Jepsen had expressions that made Steve want to offer them popcorn.

“Listen, I know no one wants to be the guy who let Captain America die on their watch, but our highest priority right now is stopping Hydra.  Wrapping me in bubble wrap and hiding me away is not a strategic use of America’s resources, and it would be a grave injustice to every civilian who doesn’t have superserum or CIA training to defend themselves with.” Steve nodded at the agents. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Sam and I have work to do.” 

* * *

“You were working on that during the whole drive, weren’t you?” Sam asked when they were out of the building. 

“Yep,” said Steve.

Immediate problem handled, he started thinking about the next challenge.  If the CIA had caused Bucky to run away for good, Steve didn’t know what he’d do—

_Yes I do._  

He would keep looking. Soldier on. 

_What else have I ever done?_   When his own lungs and blood tried to kill him, when he couldn’t do his duty and fight, when his whole world evaporated in one frozen blink—

_What else is there_ to do _, besides soldier on?_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "language!" line from Age of Ultron felt like the punchline to a joke the writers forgot to actually set up. Anyway, this is my attempt at a set-up, because Steve seems like the sort to poke fun at people's misconceptions about him.   
> Steve has probably encountered tons of people who think they know him better than they actually do, because of Captain America's fame, because of people who've seen one or two war movies, because of pop culture ideas about how things were 'back in the day'. Which is further complicated by the fact that a 'Captain America fan' might be talking about the historical figure, the persona from the USO shows, the character from the comics, the character from the radio show, etc. This could mean people asserting something incorrect about him (more likely when people are talking about him rather than to him) or it could mean a frustrating conversation where the person Steve's talking to isn't quite making sense, their responses don't line up with what he's saying, something isn't adding up--until Steve figures out that if they believe [insert assumption here], everything makes perfect sense.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for surgical horror

James floated through the vet interaction as though he were watching through someone else’s eyes while they made the decisions.  Words came out of his mouth and his feet moved and his hands picked up the kittens when requested.  The vet said that some of the recovering kittens would benefit from staying overnight, so James left with a much lighter box and only three of the seven cats he’d come in with. 

Throughout the whole thing he stayed calm even when Ninochka started acting scared for no apparent reason. 

When James returned to his spot his heart rate had gone up again and he felt exhausted.  He pulled the soiled blanket out of the large kitten box and tossed it several feet away; he was way too tired to deal with cleaning it right now.  He put down a new blanket for insulation, layers of newspaper for easier cleanup, and the water bowl and litter tray in different corners from each other.  Then the kittens went in. 

He stared at the box for a few minutes, then picked up Ninochka and climbed into the box himself. After some fussing, and a lot of sniffing, he curled up with his knees almost to his chest, Ninochka inside his shirt, and two of the kittens just inside the unzipped front of his jacket.  The third kitten was playing in the litter box; James noticed that it was the same one as before. 

_Whatever, there’re probably websites explaining cat training._

James rotated between petting Ninochka and petting the two kittens within reach.  They needed names.  He got as far as dubbing one of them Katya before falling asleep.

* * *

“I’m sorry, are you saying that you _deliberately_ let him get away?”

“Yes.” 

Bryan stared at Kurosaki in disbelief. 

“My evaluation of the situation was that it carried a high risk of Falters and myself dying, and the Winter Soldier getting away anyway, if I did not work to diffuse tension. So I worked to diffuse tension,” said Kurosaki. 

Bryan cupped his hand over his forehead and rubbed his temples.  Today was not a good day. 

“Did the possibility of alerting the rest of the team and stalling for time not occur to you?” said Bryan.

“It occurred to me and I determined it to be too high of a risk,” said Kurosaki. 

_I am surrounded by people with messed-up priorities._ Kurosaki thought that the lives of two agents outweighed the countless deaths the Soldier might cause between now and the next time they had a chance to catch him.  Captain Rogers was apparently smart enough to figure out he was being used as bait, but couldn’t grasp why catching Hydra’s most dangerous asset was important.  _His own efforts…what is he doing, exactly, that’s worth undermining this investigation?_  

Then again, maybe Rogers was trying his best and planning just wasn’t his thing.  He was, after all, a super _soldier_ , not a super-commander.  Going straight from chorus girl to successful military officer—it might not be noted in the history books, but there had to be handlers involved.  Handlers which he no longer had to guide him.  _I’ll have to set up a time to talk to him about that._  

“Kurosaki, we will have a discussion on risk assessment.  Later.  Right now, I want you to write up a full report.  Chang, Jepsen, in addition to getting the stand-in team up to speed, I want you to make friends with Rogers; get inside his head and tell me what he’s likely to pull.  Falters, start comparing reports, blueprints, patrol patterns—I want to know why no one saw this guy until Kurosaki found his mutt on the eighth floor.” 

* * *

James woke several times during the night.  He kept having dreams about the vets doing operations on his kittens.  He saw vivid images of scalpels with a thin film of bright red over the blade, thick black-red welling up where they cut, surgeons carefully setting up metal frames to use as guides, titanium-alloy rods and plates for reinforcing collarbones and scapulae that looked almost delicate when sized for kittens. There were hands holding the tiny animals down, IV drips with paralytic but not anesthetic, metal restraints to keep the patients from shifting during surgery, a vice tightening around a head— 

And then Ninochka would use a particular bark and wake him up immediately. 

Eventually he gave up on going back to sleep, but stayed put because Nina was still inside his shirt and one of the kittens was curled up on top of his face.  How it got there when he always had his arm folded over his head, James didn’t know.  His body was sticky with sweat and still shaking from the nightmares. 

He almost managed to sort of drift off again when the kittens started mewing relentlessly. He knew what all of Ninochka’s noises and gestures meant, but he had no idea what the kittens were going on about.  He tried stuffing them inside his jacket to make them warmer; didn’t work.  He tried putting them next to the water bowl so they could drink; also useless.  Next on the checklist of potential problems was food—which would involve getting up. James curled into a tighter ball and refused to move. 

The kittens mewed louder.

James started extracting himself from the box. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have to slow down the posting schedule to once every three weeks. While I have clawed my way out of a dry spell of writer's block, instead of the deluge of new words I was hoping for it's been replaced with a trickle. Though on the upside, I recently plunked out the basic plot for the remainder of Strays as well as Part 2 (which doesn't have a title yet); so that might help.
> 
>  
> 
> A few chapters ago I did cursory research on forensic composites, and based on that was sure that an accurate sketch of the Winter Soldier’s face would be Very Useful. Based on further research, the main use of forensic composites is showing them on the news, thereby encouraging anyone who recognizes the sketch to come forward and tell the investigators. I'm not sure whether my CIA agents would use this tactic; at some point I decided I was spending too much time on a subplot involving side characters.   
> Some interesting articles:  
> http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2008/06/revolution-crime-fighting  
> http://www.askaforensicartist.com/forensic-art-101/what-is-forensic-art/  
> (Incidentally, the wikipedia article on facial composites didn't have any citations for the "Usage" section, which seemed rather *sketchy*.)


	26. Chapter 26

CHAPTER XXVI

<squirrel_girl> I’ve made travel arrangements, should have the kgb files in a few weeks

<skye> cool

<skye> hey, I had a question

<squirrel_girl> shoot

<skye> lots of times people keep things secret when they shouldn’t, but do you think public disclosure is always the best option?  or just a lot of the time? 

<squirrel_girl> we’re using usernames, aren’t we? 

<skye> yeah

<squirrel_girl> dumping stuff publicly can mean that whoever has the resources to respond fastest wins

<squirrel_girl> basically we do it and then hope that the public will work it out

<squirrel_girl> doesn’t always work

<skye> I was just thinking if the kgb files have info on any current ops hydra will know they’re compromised before anyone else can get to them

<skye> if we publish publicly, that is

<squirrel_girl> that’s a good point

<squirrel_girl> but if we just give it to the nsa or something they might not use it well

<skye> what if we do a time delay

<skye> give the files to select groups first, then release to everyone

<squirrel_girl> huh

<squirrel_girl> I like that

* * *

_That actually went pretty well._   Once she and squirrel_girl got the files, Skye could send them to the team for analysis.  And as long as Skye and squirrel_girl were discussing who to send the files to first, SHIELD would have a window to run operations without people like Talbot showing up. 

* * *

Warm tears seeped out of James’ eyes as held a purring orange kitten to his chest.  He had suppressed displays of emotion while in the vet’s office but now that he was alone it didn’t matter.  All of his kittens were okay. 

His kittens needed more food, since Ninochka had decided she liked what he brought back last night, but James sat and let himself just pet them for several more minutes.

* * *

“Hey,” Kurosaki said as she plopped several files on Falters’ desk.  “Thought these might be useful, three of them are mission reports from Hydra and one is an investigation by one of our teams during the eighties.” 

“Oh, um, thanks,” Falters said blearily. 

The nearby whiteboard was covered in scribbles, several empty coffee cups littered Falters’ desk, and post-it notes were sprinkled across the scene seemingly at random. Ordinarily Kurosaki would say something snarky about sleep being a thing, but Falters had almost died. She didn’t know what coping mechanisms worked for him. 

“Wait, did you go through all the Winter Soldier files to find similar situations to what happened yesterday?” asked Falters. 

“Yeah.  Pretty sure Bryan is imagining that my report will involve pages of justification for why I let Yasha go, which it doesn’t, so I had free time and uh, crazy assassin at large and all that,” said Kurosaki.

“How come you call him Yasha? I thought we thought it was an alias,” he said. 

“Because ‘The Winter Soldier’ is like fifteen syllables,” she said. 

“Point.” 

The two of them were silent as Falters continued to blink himself back into wakefulness and Kurosaki figured out how to phrase her next sentence. 

“So, um…I think Yasha’s dog ate your Cheetos,” she said. 

“Wait, what?” said Falters.

“The dog had orange around her mouth and nose,” said Kurosaki. 

Slow realization bloomed across Falters’ sleepy face.  “Son of a bitch.  Wait a minute, if they—he probably drank your coffee.” 

“Probably,” she said.

 “That actually—I think you just solved my problem. I was stuck trying to figure out how he slipped through here,” said Falters, pointing to part of his whiteboard diagram, “given that there shouldn’t have been a big enough gap in the patrols, when in fact he just waltzed through _here_ when you meeting with Chang and Jepsen coincided with me going to the bathroom and everyone else either patrolling or working in another room.”

“Glad it helped,” she said, starting to walk away. 

“Oh, and Kurosaki—thanks for making sure I didn’t die.” 

* * *

“Come on, Clint, Avengers Tower is so much better than the crappy apartment you’re living in now—“ 

Clint interrupted Tony over the phone.  “I _like_ my crappy apartment.” 

“—and safer, we’ve got a world-class security system, no one gets in or out of the building without Jarvis knowing—“ 

“I’m _fine_ , Tony.”

“—and what with a crazy cyborg assassin trying to kill Steve and who knows what other Hydra goons running around, it just seems more strategic to have everyone living in the Tower…” 

_Trying to kill…? Oh._   Natasha had told Clint about the situation with Barnes, but from the sound of it no one had told Tony. 

Clint considered telling Tony that the crazy cyborg assassin had adopted a puppy. 

_Actually, you know what? I’m going to let Cap sort this one out._  

“One of us has to survive in case someone succeeds in blowing up the Tower,” said Clint.  “You know, to avenge the rest of you.” 

“Okay, _fine_ , but at least let me design some new arrows for you,” said Tony. 

Clint sat up straighter.  “I’m listening.” 

* * *

“That’s the basic pattern. You have to do it with a Russian accent though.” 

Adding a foreign accent to a language he could speak perfectly was weird, but James could do it.

“In Soviet Russia, joke reverse _you!_ ” 

“Much better.” Skye’s eyes were bright with mischief.  “For maximum funny, do it with a _bad_ Russian accent.”

James thought for a moment. 

“How do you do a bad Russian accent?” 

Skye demonstrated. James scrunched his face in concentration. 

“In Soviet Russia…wait, no. In Soviet…dammit. I’ve heard too many actual Russians with accented English.” 

It was Skye’s turn to look thoughtful. 

“Maybe if you do a really thick accent it will have a similar effect to a fake-sounding one.” She shrugged.  “We can always experiment more in the future.”

The two of them munched quietly for a few minutes, taking advantage of the pause in the conversation to make progress on their meal. 

“Oh yeah, apparently Ace likes you and was wondering if you could visit again,” said Skye.

James waited for Skye to continue talking. 

“Sooo, that depends on whether you want to visit again,” said Skye. 

James nodded. “Okay.” 

“So, um…wait, do you mean okay you want to visit again, or okay you understand that it’s up to you?” said Skye. 

It occurred to James that he wasn’t sure.  “I think…visiting is okay?” 

“Cool,” Skye smiled. “Oh, another thing. One of my coworkers was present when you called about the kittens and he wants to meet them.”

A very loud part of his brain declared any and all unfamiliar entities, as well as most familiar entities, to be threats to his animals.  James suddenly became acutely aware of every object within reach that could be used as a weapon. 

“I told him I would ask you, but that he shouldn’t get his hopes up.  So, once again, totally up to you.” 

James paused, and then shook his head. 

“Okay, so no kitten visits, but maybe Ace visits,” said Skye. 

James nodded. He appreciated it when Skye made it explicit that she was listening to him. 

“I like Ace,” he said.


	27. Chapter 27

“What are you drawing?”

Steve glanced up at the young man who had approached him.  “A bird.” 

“It doesn’t look like a bird.”

Evidently, deciding to sit in a park and draw was a mistake. 

“That’s because I just started.  It will look like a bird when I’m finished,” said Steve. 

“Who’s that?” the man said, pointing to the corner of Steve’s sketchpad. 

“Bucky,” Steve mumbled.

“What, like Captain America’s dead sidekick?”

“Yeah.”  Steve tried to shut himself down emotionally. He didn’t want to deal with this.

“You forgot to draw his arm.” The young man pointed out ‘helpfully’. 

“Look, if you’re such an expert, why don’t you go draw your own picture and you can make it however you like,” Steve snapped. 

“Jeez, I was just commenting; you need to chill out, man.” 

_‘Chill out’.  ‘Get with the program’. How about_ no _._  

Steve went back to drawing the bird, and ignored the young man complaining to his friends within supersoldier range of hearing.  At least he hadn’t seen past Steve’s Clever Disguise Hat. 

* * *

“Is that a pillowcase?” said Skye. 

James glanced down at the odd pouch hanging from his neck, tucked halfway into his jacket. “It used to be. Now it’s for holding kittens.”

“Awwwwwww.”

Skye knocked on the door. Ace opened it, his face lighting up when he saw Ninochka.  Ace flapped his hands excitedly; for a moment Skye worried about Ace acting weird around adults, but then Mike walked up, glanced at Ace’s hands, and just looked delighted that Ace was delighted. 

“Puppy!” said Ace.

Ninochka wagged her tail.

Mike gestured them into the apartment.  “What’s the puppy’s name?” 

“Nina.  She’s almost ten weeks old,” said James.

“You should have seen her when James first got her, she was just a little fluffball with appendages,” said Skye. 

Now, Ninochka’s head came up almost to Skye’s knees; while she was still fluffy, the shape underneath the fluff was more graceful and elongated. 

* * *

Skye, James, Mike, and Ace sat around Mike’s table, polite hellos having given way to awkward silence.

“Dad said you’re like him,” Ace piped up.  He looked pointedly at James, clearly expecting an answer to his implicit question.

“I…um…”  James became acutely aware of the fact that he didn’t know Mike very well. 

“Hydra made him work for them too,” said Mike. 

“Are you a cyborg?” asked Ace. “Dad’s a cyborg.”

“Yes,” said James.

“Can I see?”

Ace grinned, and something in James melted.  He unzipped his jacket and slipped it off.  He peeled off his glove and scrunched up the long sleeve on his shirt to reveal slightly dirty metal plating.  James suddenly wished that he had done a better job of cleaning it. 

James suddenly wished he could _remember_ the last time he cleaned it. 

“Whoa.”  Ace’s eyes lit up. 

James felt himself smiling in response.  He moved the plating around, eliciting further delight from Ace. 

“Hey, tell you what. You show off yours and I’ll show off mine,” said Mike. 

He peeled off his sweatshirt. Underneath he had plating over his torso and right forearm.  James noticed that a lot of it was on top of his clothes. 

“How do you get dressed?”

“Some of the pieces are removable and plug into permanently attached sockets.  Though to be honest, having to cut holes in some of my shirts for when I want to wear all of it is annoying.  Especially when those shirts get mixed up with my other shirts,” said Mike. 

* * *

“I mean I can’t even…I can’t even be mad at him. It.  Not really,” said Tony.  “They fried his brain so thoroughly there’s no person left, just an organic computer programmed to carry out assassinations.”

Bruce shifted his weight.  He had his own thoughts on the Winter Soldier, but he was still processing them. 

“Hydra’s files support that theory.  Specifically say to call him an ‘it’, claim that he doesn’t feel pain the same way we do, and so on,” said Bruce.  “Personal accounts from Hydra agents who worked with him describe him as emotionless.” 

“Yeah yeah, emotionless, blank, empty shell, always calm…except on rare occasions when he goes completely bonkers for no apparent reason,” said Tony.  “Honestly, putting him down is probably the most humane option, not just the most practical one.”

_Always calm, except when he’s explosively, uncontrollably violent—that doesn’t sound familiar_ at all _._  

The irony seemed to be lost on Tony, who continued to stare at the map on the screen intently.  Green dots indicated where they’d set up sensors in the area around Avengers Tower.  Tony mumbled something about how Hydra should have just made an AI, since it would less likely to blow up on them. 

Tony could be royally annoying, but he managed to do it in a way that didn’t poke at the rage rippling just under Bruce’s skin. Things like blatantly ignoring Bruce’s lack of a psychology degree made him want to groan, not yell. Or do more than yell.

“I’m not so sure about that,” he said. 

“Huh, what?” said Tony, who might have forgotten that Bruce was in the room. 

“Lethal self-defense may well be necessary, but I’m not sure that putting him down is the most humane option,” said Bruce.

He couldn’t help wonder if the Winter Soldier was empty the same way Bruce Banner was calm.  Which was to say, not even a little bit. 

* * *

“Um, do you ever…do your attachment points get torn up when you move too fast certain ways?” asked James.

“Only if I want to twist my torso,” said Mike. 

Ace was listening avidly. On impulse, James took off his shirt. 

“The internal structure is supposed to give me full range of motion, but the way the plating’s connected on the shoulder it ends up yanking my skin sometimes.”  James pressed his fingers next to the scarring.

“’Cause we’re supersoldiers and we heal, so who cares if the involuntary assets are in pain?” Mike said bitterly.  “Why bother designing things right when you could be monologueing instead.” 

What Mike said wasn’t funny, or happy, and yet it made James want to laugh.  Then again, his emotions were pretty thoroughly broken.

Ace was staring at his red star. 

“Are you Asgardian?” said Ace.

“What?”  James had no idea what Ace was talking about.

“According to the History Channel you’re Asgardian.  Here, I’ll show you.” 

Ace grabbed James’ arm and led him into a room with a monitor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sidenote: searching "[some number] week old border collie puppy" and looking at all the images is very enjoyable (and totally counts as research).


	28. Chapter 28

“The thing is, if you go back through Hydra’s files, the first reference to the Winter Soldier is a deployment.  You have mission reports, medical records, lists of protocols and necessary equipment, cybernetic upgrades, and so on and so forth—but nowhere do you find any explanation of where he came from.” 

Skye had long since given up remembering the names of the nondescript, professorly-looking men in the documentary. 

“Hydra made the switch to digital files around the same time as the intelligence agency they infiltrated. Many existing files were copied over—but any record of the origin of the Winter Soldier remained hardcopy only,” said the narrator, as a grainy photo of James using a rifle floated across the screen. 

“One theory is that he received some form of serum, the same procedure that empowered Captain America,” the narrator paused, “as well as Johann Schmidt, better known as Red Skull.”

WWII footage of the appropriate individuals accompanied the narration. 

“The serum theory is a tempting one, given we have seen him go toe to toe with Captain Rogers.” The video cut between Random Professor Dude number two and cell phone footage of the causeway battle. “There’s just one problem: Hydra has been doing supersoldier experiments for decades, and none of the results match the Winter Soldier in physical ability.  If Hydra knew how to make supersoldiers back in the fifties, why make only one?  Why isn’t there a, a Winter Army, as it were?” 

“But what if the Winter Soldier wasn’t made?” said the narrator.  “What if,” the video switched to Thor during the Chitauri invasion, “he was born with his superhuman abilities?” 

“I feel like we should have popcorn or something,” said Skye. 

Ace looked at Mike hopefully. Mike sighed. 

“We don’t have popcorn,” he said. 

* * *

“While most citizens of Asgard didn’t make it into Norse mythology, there is a god who might just fit the bill.  Ullr is associated with marksmanship, hunting, and, of course, winter,” said the narrator.

“…but he has a bow in that picture.  I use a rifle, not a bow,” said James. 

“The Winter Soldier is not a spy.  He doesn’t use fleshed out covers, doesn’t befriend targets, doesn’t manipulate them—he finds them, stalks them, and kills them.  I would absolutely consider him a hunter,” said a guy who was supposed to be ex-CIA. 

“If they want a marksman who uses Paleolithic technology, they should look at Clint Barton. Maybe _he’s_ Asgardian,” James muttered. 

* * *

“But according to some sources, Ullr is actually Thor’s stepson.” 

Skye laughed. “I’m guessing that’s news to Thor, since he’s not even married yet.” 

“Wait, how do you know he’s not married?” asked Mike. 

“May asked Sif when she was helping us take down Lorelei,” said Skye. 

“Who’s Lorelei?” asked Ace.

“A bad Asgardian,” said Skye.

“Who’s Sif?” he asked.

“A badass Asgardian,” she said. 

* * *

“The Winter Soldier is kind of like a computer that can beat you at chess.  He is very skilled in certain areas, but that’s not necessarily a sign of true intelligence.  In fact, all evidence suggests it’s quite the opposite—“ 

“Oh, fuck you,” said James.

“You said a bad word,” whispered Ace. 

“James, watch your language in front of Ace,” said Mike. 

“I mean, this is a guy who apparently can’t always figure out how to get undressed when he comes back after a mission—“ 

_I think you mean I figured out how to make my handlers do it for me. Pulling off that level of laziness is an art form._  

“Maximum deployment length is two weeks, and if they send him out for that long, it’s with two weeks’ worth of energy bars.  It’s _highly_ unlikely that he could survive on his own.” 

_Someone cleaned out their freezer and I found two mostly-full cartons of ice cream in a dumpster, still frozen.  I am doing_ just fine _on my own._

* * *

“There are some who believe that Hydra’s treatment of the Winter Soldier amounts to brainwashing,” said the narrator. 

Mike glanced at James, who was suddenly sitting up straighter. 

“We know that Hydra used some very harsh methods to control the Soldier’s behavior.  Even if we take their word for it that regular leucotomies are medically necessary, a couple thousand volts through the brain is _not_ trivial,” said one of the experts.  “Where exactly he sits on a spectrum between culpability and victimhood is, at this time, unclear.”

‘A couple thousand volts’ took on new meaning now that Mike was standing right next to the guy who had been on the receiving end. 

“The question of guilt may seem abstract, but it has very concrete diplomatic implications,” said the narrator. 

“Either we’re looking at an Asgardian went to another world and ran amok, _or_ , we’re looking at one of the people Thor is responsible for being hurt by humans.  It’s a question of whether we should be upset at Asgard, because they keep letting their psychos terrorize our world, or whether Asgard should be upset at us for, effectively, torturing one of their citizens.” 

* * *

After the documentary finished, the four of them settled into Ace’s room instead of going back to the kitchen. Ace could feel the same guilty unhappiness that happened whenever Dad’s friends came over, and he knew exactly who was generating the emotion. 

“Can we skip to the part where you realize you’re not bad?” said Ace. 

James looked up at Ace, who looked back with deliberate eye contact. 

“I don’t understand,” said James. 

Ace set his shoulders and started trying to pull the right words together. 

“Lots of people were forced to work for Hydra; some of them come visit.  They all…”  Ace’s hands moved as haphazardly as the people’s emotions.  “They say words and have emotions, every time they come over.  Most of them realized they’re not really bad; I’m still waiting on some of them.”

He gave Dad a _look_ because Dad knew who the slowpokes were.

“You should skip to the part where you realize you’re not bad; it’s more efficient,” said Ace.

The news people on TV talked like the Winter Soldier was the main bad guy, and showed images of him nearly every time they talked about Hydra, but Ace knew better.  Bad guys didn’t look like bad guys. Bad guys looked like nice people in suits or flower dresses. 

“What would have happened if you refused a mission?” asked Dad. 

“They would have punished me, wiped me, and maybe adjusted my programming,” said James. 

‘A couple thousand volts’ was a regular thing, an at-least-every-two-weeks thing, so punishment must be worse.  Ace retreated inside his mind before the facts could make him hurt. 

“What would happen if you ran away?” asked Dad. 

“They would catch me, then punish, wipe, and adjust,” said James. 

“See?” said Ace. “You’re not like the people who could’ve just walked away without anyone getting hurt.”

Ace poked Dad to let him know he wanted his room back.  Dad shooed the guests out of the room; Ace closed the door behind them and flopped on his bed.  Grown-ups could take _forever_ to figure out really obvious things, and he’d had enough people time for now. 


	29. Chapter 29

The pouch tucked into James’ jacket started wriggling, and one of the kittens popped its head out and meowed. Skye watched as James pulled the tortoiseshell kitten out and set it on his lap.  Ninochka got up on her back legs, resting her front paws on James’ knee, and sniffed the kitten. 

“What hardware did you have to remove?  Obviously not…” Mike gestured at his eye. 

_Oh._

_Oh no._  

Skye had brought someone with implanted trackers to Mike’s apartment.  To Ace. 

Mike looked at Skye with horrified realization.  “You didn’t.”

Skye turned to James, who looked confused and scared. 

“Your file says that there were trackers implanted in your body; did you—um, did you find and remove them by any chance?” she asked. 

“Then they would know that I’m malfunctioning if they find me,” said James. 

“Ace is on the other side of that door,” said Mike.  “My son is on the other side of that door, and you brought Hydra trackers—what the hell were you thinking?” 

“I’m so sorry,” Skye whispered.  “We’ll—we’ll figure out all the angles, make sure Ace is safe—“ 

There wasn’t anything else to say. 

James was staring into space. _Wait a minute…_  

“Um, James—do you know why no one has tried to retrieve you?” she asked. 

He scrunched his brow. “The frequencies for the trackers were hardcopy only; the team that had the hardcopies died.”

“They died.” Mike repeated. “Cause of death?”

A smile flickered briefly on James’ face. 

“Several broken necks, two crushed skulls, a few stab wounds to the heart or carotid, and one partially removed trachea.” 

Mike relaxed noticeably. “And the hardcopies?”

“Hidden,” said James.

“And the data wasn’t loaded into any devices or anything?” said Skye. 

James flexed his metal fingers.  “I set the building on fire.” 

“So unless someone finds the files you hid, or has a backup copy, we should be safe.”  Mike said the last phrase hesitantly.

“We should probably make a contingency plan just in case,” said Skye. 

“You think?” Mike’s tone left no room for argument. 

* * *

CIA investigators were crawling around Steve’s apartment for several days after the incident with Bucky, but eventually cleared out enough to give him some semblance of privacy.

Steve carried his nightstand out of his bedroom and into the living room area.  He set it down right next to the window where Bucky had left the bag of socks.  He grabbed a plate stacked with peanut butter sandwiches and put it on the nightstand. He hesitated before adding the note; if his protection detail spied on him from the building across the street, which they probably did, the note would be visible.  Granted, the sandwiches would also be visible, but a note positioned so as to be readable to someone hanging onto the windowsill would be suspicious. 

Steve ended up putting the note, but surrounding it with old receipts and other miscellany. _There. Now it’s only suspicious if someone looks at it up close._  

Food had always been one of the ways Bucky took care of people he liked, and apparently that was still the case.  Expressing affection in the same language seemed like the best option for reaching out to him.

* * *

“I can put you in touch with Akela Amador.  She’s one of us—used to be a field agent or something, but now she’s a self-taught expert on Hydra’s implant tech.  She’s one of the people to go to for getting stuff removed without setting it off, and _the_ person to go to if you want to disable part of the mechanism while leaving the rest functional,” said Mike.  “Useful if you want to keep your depth perception.  Or your arm.” 

“I can help her go through the documentation.  Trust me, it’s a nightmare.  Apparently Hydra’s method for organizing information was to not,” said Skye.

James looked at her with an implicit question. 

“I went through Hydra’s files trying to find information to help you.  I was…I was going to tell you when I had more of the pieces.” Skye smiled briefly. “I’ve kind of hit a dead end, where there’s a record of some devices being built but the surgical details are missing.  It doesn’t say where they put them in you.” 

“The paper files say,” said James.  “They have diagrams.”

* * *

After Skye and James left, Mike knocked on Ace’s door. 

“Hey, I need to talk to you about something.  We’re going to have to move to another apartment kinda soon; do you want to talk now or later?”

* * *

“I mean, he’s an assassin.  Why would you become a professional killer unless you liked killing?” 

James sat in a corner of the bar, fingers curled around the cheapest drink the place offered.  The alcohol made him look more normal, and therefore less noticeable, as he spied on public opinion by watching the television and eavesdropping on conversations.

_Surprise surprise, everyone’s still obsessed with me._

He had tried to go to sleep after visiting Mike and Ace, but just ended up staying awake thinking about his trackers. 

“I don’t know, there are a lot of people who don’t like their jobs.” 

“Yeah, but you’d still have to be comfortable with it, and comfortable with doing a lot of it.” 

James was comfortable with killing the same way he was comfortable with injuries.  He wouldn’t stop or slow down when he had a job to do, but he was also much happier with an absence of pain—his or anyone else’s. 

He poked at that idea.  James couldn’t remember why missions were so important. It had something to do with hugging, working tangles out of waist-length hair, and deliberately getting on people’s nerves.  Forts made of couch cushions and blankets.  Someone shaking while they pressed their face into his shoulder, wetness seeping into his shirt. 

_Barnes grew up the oldest child of four…_

_Best friends since childhood, Barnes and Rogers were inseparable…_

_Oh._  That was probably it.  

_That…_

That meant that he became a weapon to defend people from Hydra.

That meant that Hydra stole him, turned him inside out, and used him for—

There was unsettling laughter—low in pitch and low in decibel level.  A couple of people sitting near James turned to look at him warily.  _Oh.  I’m the one laughing._  

He didn’t have it in him to care right now, so he finished his drink and left before someone decided he was suspicious enough to remember.

The storybook hero from the Smithsonian was too distant for James to truly comprehend the loss, but a weapon self-forged to protect those smaller than him…

That was something he understood perfectly.


	30. Chapter 30

May flowed effortlessly through tai chi poses, making each movement seem like the most natural possible thing her body could be doing.  Skye moved through the same poses less gracefully but without making mistakes, only glancing at May occasionally. 

Skye wrapped herself in the calm that came from working through a pattern, keeping her worry entirely inside her head.  She felt awful about forgetting James’ trackers.  In retrospect, it did make some kind of sense—Hydra had had weeks to try to recapture the Winter Soldier, which implied that something was stopping them from finding him.  It was possible that Skye’s brain had figured this out rationally, decided that it was safe to bring James to Mike’s place, and then forgotten the decision-making process. 

Skye hoped this was what happened, because the alternative was that she was scarily irresponsible. Hydra was out there, SHIELD was a tiny, struggling fragment, and she couldn’t afford to screw up like this.

* * *

Steve stepped out of his apartment to go get lunch, mostly because eating out would provide Bucky a chance to break into his apartment again, and a little bit because the dishes were piling up. 

Agent Bryan was talking with Chang and Jepsen in the hall.  Bryan showing up here was, as far as Steve knew, unprecedented, and therefore ominous. 

“Captain,” Bryan nodded.

“Agent Bryan,” Steve said, professional but not quite warm. 

“Are you headed out to eat by any chance?  There’s this place I heard was good…” said Bryan. 

“Oh, um, yeah, I was just heading to the shawarma place down the street,” said Steve. 

“Mind if I join you? We could discuss how to keep our anti-Hydra efforts from accidentally undermining each other,” said Bryan.

Steve minded, but there wasn’t a polite way to say that.  “Sure.” 

* * *

James climbed down the side of the building until he reached Rogers’ window.  Since the incident with Ninochka the CIA had improved their security, leaving far fewer holes for him to slip through.  They did not, however, watch the building two blocks over with easy roof access, nor did they patrol the roof of Rogers’ building nearly often enough.  A few hours with his scope taught him the CIA’s new patrol patterns, a couple of flying leaps brought him into auditory range, and carefully timed excursions downward had let him learn the slight creak in the hinges of Rogers’ front door.

Rogers’ door opened and closed, which meant that Rogers just left his apartment, which meant that James could leave the latest collection of food and clothes. 

James gripped the windowsill and locked his metal arm.  He started maneuvering the bag through the window—now that the CIA was actually paying attention, it would look suspicious to tape it to the outside—when he saw the note just inside the window. 

_Help yourself :)_

His brain stuttered to a halt as he connected window, note, and the stack of peanut butter sandwiches sitting next to the note. 

_What._

_Why._

_How did you get food Steve I didn’t give you those sandwiches?_

More to the point, when did Steve start getting _excess_ food, and why was he offering it to people outside a fifth-story window. James didn’t know anyone besides him climbed—

_Wait._

_I left him a note about windows.  He knows someone is feeding him through the window._  

So Rogers was apparently trying to be nice to his anonymous benefactor.  Which was completely counterproductive, obviously said benefactor already had food, Steve was the one who was out of a job and injured and starving.

It occurred to James that Steve might not actually be injured and starving. 

James pulled himself up to see more of Rogers’ apartment.  Every inch of counter space was covered in dishes.  _Steve that’s not what counters are for._   Rogers was hopeless. James opened the window further and slowly entered the apartment, continually scanning for traps. There weren’t any, which was its own problem; just because the soldier decided the Rogers mission was stupid didn’t mean Rogers had any way of knowing that.  He’d been unconscious for the entire swim back to shore—

_Thinking about something else now, thinking about…thinking about…dishes._ Rogers couldn’t eat like a civilized human if he didn’t have any clean dishes. 

* * *

Steve had a sudden panic that he’d forgotten his keys, so he patted his pocket to reassure himself that they were there, only to discover that they weren’t. 

“I left my keys in my apartment,” he said to Bryan.  “Excuse me.” 

They were on the ground floor by now, so Steve stepped outside and started scaling the building. His door locked itself when it closed, and this was the easiest way to break into his apartment.

He got a grip on his windowsill and was about to pull himself up when he noticed the sound of water running. _Did I seriously leave the sink running?  Seriously?_   It was possible he needed to spend less time rereading the files Sam and he stole from various Hydra facilities and more time sleeping. 

Steve heard the sink turn off.

_Bryan is probably watching from below._   Steve made himself keep moving, doing his best not to look like he was being cautious.  He kept moving even once he saw his best friend for the first time since the helicarrier, and he kept moving as he tried to figure out why on earth Bucky was washing his dishes. Not that he was complaining, but last time he checked Bucky hated doing the dishes. 

Steve wasn’t quite quiet enough when he nudged the table with the sandwiches out of the way. Bucky started, whipped his head around, and froze.  Steve made himself keep moving until he was fully inside, wincing at the way Bucky flinched. Steve held up open hands in a pacifying gesture; Bucky stood perfectly still, weight on the balls of his feet and knees slightly bent. 

“Sorry to startle you, I just came to get my keys,” Steve whispered, just loud enough for enhanced ears to pick up. He didn’t know for a fact that the CIA had bugged his apartment, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He tried taking one step forward, but Bucky jumped slightly, ready to spring into action. Whether that meant running or fighting Steve didn’t know. 

_I can tell Bryan that my keys were harder to find than I thought._ That would give him time to talk to Bucky without arousing suspicion.  He could also say he got an important text related to his efforts against Hydra, and that lunch would have to be postponed. That just left the question of what to say to Bucky. 

Steve’s mind was annoyingly blank.  Bucky continued to stare at him with wide, fearful eyes.  _Have to say something, come on…_

“I really appreciate the things you brought.  Think the hoodie with the stars on the cuff is my new favorite warm…jacket-like…garment.” _Why is there not a word for jackets, sweaters, and so on as a group?_

Steve wasn’t sure if Bucky looked slightly more at ease or if it was just wishful thinking on his part. Bucky’s eyes flicked to the window behind Steve, and Steve realized he was blocking Bucky’s exit.  

_Oh._  

When Sam and Steve first set out to find Bucky, Sam had dragged Steve to a psychologist friend of his. One of the things they discussed was helping people against their will.  An injured leg affected your ability to walk; an injured mind affected your ability to make decisions, and depending on the mental illness people could make irreversible, monumentally bad decisions.  Sam thought that Bucky posed a risk to himself or others, which Steve couldn’t actually argue against given that Bucky had killed at least two people since the failed Insight launch.

But.  

Everything in Steve screamed against the idea of taking any freedom away from Bucky. Hydra had taken and taken and taken, the _last_ thing Bucky needed was the people who should be helping him doing the same thing. So it would be for his own good; that was exactly what the ‘re-education technicians’ had told Bucky about _brainwashing_ him.

Then again, this was all a moot point if Steve couldn’t take him down without the agents next door hearing anything.  _Yeah, that’s likely._  

“Okay, my keys are over there,” Steve pointed, “I’m going to get them and…you can leave if you want, or we could talk, or we could not talk but with you still here…”

Steve slowly stepped away from the window, and felt panic at the idea that Bucky was going to disappear through it and never come back.  He honestly couldn’t tell if this was irrational or not.  Bucky watched him closely, but didn’t move.

“It’s really good to see you, Buck.” 

Bucky’s face shifted at the sound of his name, and Steve knew it wasn’t just his imagination this time.

“Bucky, I uh…I want you to know if you need any help, just ask and I’ll do whatever I can for you. With you ‘til the end of the line.”  Steve smiled at Bucky.

Bucky continued to stare back, still ready to move at a millisecond’s notice.  Steve tried to read the emotion on his face. _It’s probably several emotions, though; not sure if I can sort them out._ Steve continued moving slowly towards his keys. 

“If you need space, time, whatever, I understand,” _intellectually, sort of, if I look at it from a distance and squint,_ “Just—come talk to me eventually?” Steve’s voice caught, “Please don’t disappear, Bucky.”

Bucky gave a small but definite nod.  Steve smiled without deliberately deciding to do it, for the first time in—for the first time in a while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't directly related to this chapter, but I've been meaning to write about dissociation for a while, since it's something that Bucky does relatively often in this fic.
> 
> Dissociation is when a person’s mind retreats from their physical surroundings. This can be deliberate, such as a student retreating from a particularly boring class to daydream about Marvel characters, or involuntary, such as someone accidentally spacing out while driving. It can happen to varying extents—anything from being aware of your physical surroundings while feeling somewhat disconnected, to having a hazy partial awareness of your surroundings, to being completely unaware of what’s going on around you. While dissociated, you might be passive and unmoving—like the part of the bank vault scene in CA:TWS where Bucky was staring blankly, unable to hear Pierce—or you might go on autopilot, like Bucky did in the chapter where he talks to the vet about his kittens. In the latter case it can be hard to tell from the outside whether someone is dissociated (i.e. for all we know Bucky might have spent most of CA:TWS dissociated). 
> 
> Some specific types of dissociation that have names:  
> Depersonalization—being aware of what’s going on but feeling like it’s happening to someone else  
> Derealization—being aware of what’s going on but feeling like it isn’t real  
> Dissociative amnesia—having memory blanks corresponding to the time spent dissociated
> 
> Some amount of dissociation is normal—everyone daydreams and spaces out at least occasionally—it’s when it starts happening excessively that it becomes a problem.


	31. Chapter 31

James (soldier? Bucky?) watched Rogers intently, running and rerunning calculations of distance and acceleration and whether he could get to the window before Rogers got to him. He fought down the snarl of emotions that threatened to swallow him whole, too tangled-up to be identifiable.

As soon as Rogers circled far enough James dashed for the window.

* * *

Steve felt like he’d just been gutted. The emptiness in the room was tangible to the point of being oppressive.

 _…I really hope Bryan wasn’t looking up just then._ Steve supposed he would find out in three, two, one…

No one kicked down Steve’s door. That meant that he could just walk back out of his apartment and pretend nothing happened, as soon as he recovered enough to make his face cooperate.

He was going to tell Bryan that it took a really, really long time to find his keys.

* * *

“What is that?” asked Kurosaki.

“Chili powder,” said Falters, as he poured it into his bag of Cheetos.

“You know you can just get spicy Cheetos, right?” said Kurosaki.

“Those would be labeled as such. This way, Yasha won’t get any warning if he steals my Cheetos again.”

* * *

James didn’t stop running until he was several blocks away, at which point he slipped into the crowds of pedestrians and moved in time with them. Eventually his adrenaline response would calm down. Eventually his brain would stop screaming ‘threat’.

Eventually.

James felt sick. A few weeks ago he would have assumed this meant a physical illness; he had since learned the connection between twisted-up gut want-to-squirm-away and the word ‘guilt’. Right now it felt like oil paint—you could tell the artist used a lot of crimson paint to get the reddish hue on the canvas, but not what other colors were mixed in. James had a strong sense that he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t tell what other feelings were mixed in.

_“You’re! My! Mis—“_

_No no no no no—_ James willed his mind to be blank and crossed his arms firmly, locking robotic joints so he couldn’t move, freezing metal fingers wrapped around his organic arm.

The phrases ‘killing machine’ and ‘rabid dog’ kept repeating in his head in a hundred different voices. Newscasters declaring confidently, mothers talking in hushed tones while their children played nearby, highschoolers picking apart and analyzing the world around them. Other homeless men who looked like him bemoaning the new level of suspicion they received.

_“We can put the couch cushions on the floor, just like when we were kids.”_

The soldier wanted to curl up in a hiding spot and never come out, except part of him also wanted to run back to Steve. The same part of him also insisted that going to Steve was a good idea; that there wouldn’t be a punishment ( _how could there not be?_ ) or that whatever followed would be worth it.

The soldier— _James_ , he had a name, _James Barnes_ —was shaking where he stood, and passersby were starting to stare before moving on. He made himself move forward, still trembling.

* * *

“Hey Dad.”

“Yeah, Ace?”

“Since the apartment is compromised anyway, it wouldn’t make a difference if James came over again this week, would it?”

Mike couldn’t argue with that, not when Ace was working so hard to handle the transition of moving.

* * *

“So what are you working on exactly? Maybe I can help you with strategy,” said Bryan.

It was taking most of Steve’s willpower to keep acting civil and oblivious. Bryan wasn’t just being condescending and manipulative, he was _bad_ at manipulation. His pleasant manner was noticeably fake, he wasn’t pushing any of the right psychological buttons, and Steve seriously wondered if the agent had even done his homework. After Nick, Natasha, and Sharon, Steve found it downright insulting that anyone thought this kind of shoddy work would have the intended effect on him.

“That’s classified,” said Steve.

The brief look of shock on Bryan’s face was glorious. _Yeah, bet you’re not used to being on the receiving end of that._

“I’m sorry?”

“SHIELD wasn’t the only organization involved in Operation Paperclip; if they were compromised, the CIA could be as well,” said Steve. “Not that I think _you’re_ Hydra or anything; you just can’t be too careful, you know?”

It was possible striking Bryan speechless shouldn’t be this satisfying, but Steve was hurting, and Bryan was rude to his subordinates. Besides, with the way Bryan kept acting like anything cerebral was beyond Steve, it wasn’t as though surprising him was difficult.

“You can’t afford to run around without a plan, either,” said Bryan. “I can help you with that.”

Steve mentally awarded him points for recovering well.

“Good thing I have one then.”

If there was one thing Steve was good at it, was being difficult. _There’s a reason my teachers all said I had an attitude problem._ There was a reason that, when Steve and Bucky both pulled their own weight in the trouble-making department, the adults in their lives had always assumed that Steve was the ringleader.

* * *

Skye was so focused on the punching bag she didn’t hear May at first.

“Skye.”

“Yeah?” She glanced at May and kept punching.

“Is something bothering you?” asked May.

Eventually Skye would have to explain about finding Bucky Barnes alive and wandering around, and why she didn’t tell anyone—but that super awkward conversation could wait. At least until James was okay with her telling people.

“Why do you ask?” said Skye.

“Because your technique is sloppy,” said May.

Left unsaid was the fact that Skye was hitting the bag way too hard to be tired yet. She threw a couple of punches with better technique, then stopped.

“I just—everything’s a mess, Hydra is running around being evil, people are getting hurt, and I’m doing my best but…my best just isn’t good enough,” she said.

“That’s called being a SHIELD agent,” said May.

Encapsulated in those six words was the fact that one of the most badass people in existence struggled with same thing Skye did.

Skye nodded, and returned to hitting the bag, focusing on doing it well this time.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to go on hiatus after chapter 32, probably for one or two months. There are a number of short fic ideas bouncing around my head that I would like to get out of my system. And switching gears for a little while might actually help with writing this in the long term.


	32. Chapter 32

Skye looked in the mirror, examining her carefully styled hair. She used to do this every day, before Hydra turned out to be more than a paragraph in a history textbook. Which, incidentally, was not easy when she lived in her van. Lately, though, she was lucky if she managed to brush it on a daily basis.

So instead of being sad about her hair not being the way she liked, Skye decided it was time for a change. There were plenty of haircuts that didn’t require intensive styling to look cute. She wanted to make sure the stylist understood the exact level of cute that needed to be matched, though, hence the effort to make it look right.

Getting a haircut also had the psychological effect of feeling like a fresh start, and Skye thought she could use that right now.  

* * *

It was the middle of the day, but James was curled up in the kitten box as if he were planning to sleep. He replayed what Rogers said to him, trying to make sense of it. He could hear Ninochka moving outside the box, playing with an old, split-open tennis ball.

_Come talk to me_ and _don’t disappear_ were intuitive enough; the Winter Soldier was an extremely useful weapon. _It’s good to see you_ was similarly sensible from a tactical point of view. The _eventually_ tacked onto _come talk to me_ was definitely not something Pierce would have said, but Rogers was a good person and Pierce was a liar and attempted mass murderer, so it made sense that they would be different. _I appreciate the things you brought_ was mission feedback, even if the mission was unofficial.

_“If you need any help, just ask and I’ll do whatever I can for you. With you ‘til the end of the line.”_

The direct offer of resources called up images of guns too new to have accumulated the scratches that leave distinctive rifling marks, cyclonite and detonators, precise blueprints, thorough intel on security systems, and specialized equipment straight out of a science fiction magazine.

He could almost smell the inside of his mask.

_With you ‘til the end of the line_ called up images of charcoal-smudged fingers, tickets to a Dodgers game, a foot sticking out of a bush that wasn’t quite big enough for hide-and-seek, a church full of people in black, and a blur of red-white-and-blue dancing in his peripheral vision while shells whistled through the air. It twisted around the offer of help and made James think it didn’t mean what he thought it meant.

_“Sorry to startle you, I just came to get my keys.”_

No one apologized to the soldier. If he didn't like being treated poorly, then he shouldn’t have malfunctioned so often; it was only natural that people would hold a grudge after…after whatever the hell he had done. Killing lab partners or ignoring orders or biting people; it wasn’t like he could actually remember.

_“Sorry to startle you.”_

James wanted to know _why_.

* * *

When Skye went to meet James, it was with a lighter head, bangs hanging in her peripheral vision, and itchy bits of hair that had somehow worked their way into her bra.

Skye could tell the exact moment James saw her, because his eyes widened slightly and he tilted his entire body toward her to get a better look.

“You…” James grabbed a handful of his own hair and shook it.

“Yep.” Skye smiled and spun so he could see every angle.

Skye sat down at their table. James scrunched his brow in the particular way that meant he was trying to come up with words.

“Can…” James started to reach towards Skye’s hair, then pulled his hand back.

“Yeah.” Skye took a lock from near her face and held it a couple inches forward.

James examined her hair with hands covered in almost matching knit gloves; strands of hair caught on the frayed edges where he’d cut the fingers off of the right-hand glove.

“It’s soft.”

He put a slight emphasis on the second word, as if he had expected it to be otherwise. His eyes flicked to the top of her head.

“Thanks,” said Skye.

“Mine isn’t,” said James. “Not when I’ve just washed it.”

Skye was ninety-nine percent sure she could figure out how to fix that.

“Okay, how do you wash it?” she asked. “Do you use conditioner?”

“I rub soap into wherever there’s gunk that won’t come out with just water?”

Skye tried not to look at James in horror. Based on the way he shrunk into himself she didn’t quite succeed.

“Usually just use water,” he mumbled.

“That’s—well, I mean most people don’t really know how to take proper care of their hair, and there are like five million different hair products to sort through, so it takes a while to figure out,” Skye said. “…I spend more time thinking about hair than most people.”

“So…it’s like if I saw someone trying to make a shot at a thousand yards without accounting for the Earth’s spin?”

“I think so,” said Skye. “Seriously? The Earth spinning affects where the bullet goes?”

James grinned at Skye and nodded.

“And here I thought air resistance was annoying,” she said. “Soap strips too much oil out of your hair, which leaves it dry and sort of crispy. Shampoo works much better.”

* * *

James looked down at the piece of paper Skye handed him. She had covered it in notes about hair care. James thought it was unbelievably complicated for something that didn’t involve pointers.

“Oh, I got you something,” said Skye.

She pulled a phone out of her purse, put it on the table, and slid it towards him. “So we can contact each other more easily.”

James picked it up and admired the perfectly intact screen and shiny, unscratched case. _See, this is what future tech is_ supposed _to look like._

“I designed the security measures,” Skye said, smiling. “Unless Hydra’s got an expert on Return-Oriented Programming, they’re not going to hack it, and it uses supersingular isogeny key exchange for secure communications.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking a break from this fic after this chapter; the plan is a month or two. The plan is also to post other (shorter!) fics during that time. Then I'll get back to working on this one. 
> 
>  
> 
> Cyclonite, chemical name cyclotrimethylenetrinitromine, is also known as hexogen, T4, or (most commonly) RDX. It is a military-grade explosive which is more powerful than TNT when detonated, yet stable enough to withstand small arms fire without accidentally going off. 
> 
> Convincing the victim that the abuse is their own fault is a relatively common abuser tactic. This means that the victim's anger at their situation gets directed inward instead of at the abuser. It also means that the victim thinks the way to make the abuse stop is to change their behavior--and if it's still happening, they just haven't changed enough--instead of realizing that the way to make the abuse stop is to get away from the abuser. It might also make the victim think that other people will treat them just as badly as the abuser, since after all they take their behavior with them if they try to leave.  
> This seems like *exactly* how Hydra would want the Winter Soldier to think. 
> 
> 'Coriolis drift' refers to the combined changes to a bullet's trajectory from the Coriolis Effect and the Eotvos* Effect. The Coriolis Effect refers to the bullet appearing to move along a curved path because the Earth is spinning underneath while it's in flight; put a different way, a 'stationary' target is actually a moving target because the surface of the Earth is moving, therefore a sniper has to aim where there target is going to be when the bullet actually gets there, rather than where the target is now. The Eotvos Effect is a change in measured/perceived gravitational force acting on an object (in this case a bullet) depending on whether it is moving east or west; I didn't read about all the physics behind it, but the difference in downward acceleration means that the bullet will drop a different amount over the same range depending on what direction it's fired. 
> 
> 'Return-Oriented Programming' is a humorous way of referring to a particular hacking technique. (There are different programming paradigms, such as functional programming or object-oriented programming, which determine how you approach the problems you're trying to solve.) Disclaimer: this is not my area of expertise. When you're writing code (a long list of instructions), it's good practice to break it up into functions (short lists of instructions), unless you're writing a *really* short program; 'calling' a function means telling the computer to execute the instructions, usually using some data, and resulting in a return value. Apple has a way of preventing people trying to jailbreak iPhones from running their own code on the device; they can only run Apple's code. Extraordinarily clever people are sometimes able to use return values from Apple's functions to cause other Apple functions to be called, and then they can set up a chain of functions that they want to call that will trigger each other like dominos. 
> 
> Encrypted communication involves three basic parts: verification (making sure you're talking to who you think you're talking to), key exchange (making sure you both know what key(s) you're using to encrypt and decrypt stuff), and then the actual encrypted messages. Supersingular isogeny key exchange is a way of exchanging keys that is resistant to quantum computing attacks, unlike RSA or elliptic curve cryptography which are hard to break with traditional computing but could be broken with a sufficiently sized quantum computer. There don't currently exist quantum computers large enough to pose a threat, but more advanced quantum computers seems like the sort of thing the MCU might have, and it certainly doesn't hurt Skye to be paranoid. 
> 
>  
> 
> *there are supposed to be umlauts over both of the O's, but I'm not sure how to make that happen


	33. Chapter 33

Skye could say with certainty that it was impossible to die of boredom, because if it were possible it would have happened three hours into the stakeout. As it was, May was about as talkative as usual, the snacks were all eaten, and their guy was four and a half hours late. And counting.

It was less the fact that Skye had to sit still and do nothing and more the fact that she had to stay perpetually ready to switch gears and leap into action that made waiting difficult.

Skye’s phone vibrated briefly. She pulled it out of her pocket to find that James had texted her a picture of kittens. Very tiny, very adorable kittens.

_Awww, they’re cute :)_ , she texted back. A minute later her phone buzzed again.

_:)_

James followed up the smiley with another picture of kittens.

* * *

After Skye’s phone beeped for the eighth time, May gave in to her curiosity and glanced over. There was a yawning kitten on the screen.

“Is Trip visiting another animal shelter?”

“Um, actually, this is from my friend James, he found stray kittens a while ago,” said Skye.

* * *

James sent Skye a text that said ‘ _Yekaterina: ’_. Before Skye could spend very much time wondering what he meant, he followed up with a picture of a single black kitten.

Then he texted _‘Beorn: ’_ and followed with a picture of a black manx kitten.

‘ _Aloysius’_ was a particularly fluffy black kitten.

‘ _Margaret_ ’ was a tortoiseshell with yellow splotches on her nose and left ear.

‘ _Dmitri_ ’ and ‘ _Lynne_ ’ were two grey tabbies.

‘ _Bilbo_ ’ was an orange tabby.

Skye waited for another text, but apparently Bilbo was the last of them.

* * *

“Hi, Steve Rogers. Lupe Sitwell?”

The old woman looked him up and down, her face carefully expressionless.

“I already know what Jasper did. I watch the news.”

“News doesn’t always get their facts right; even when they do, they don’t tell the whole story,” said Steve.

Something flickered across her face.

“Your son was a good man,” said Steve.

Lupe opened the door all the way to let him in.

* * *

“So Hydra has a way of brainwashing people that actually works.”

“Several, actually. During the Cold War, the American intelligence community researched brainwashing to counter the possibility of their agents being brainwashed; the SSR found evidence of brainwashing methods being used in the Soviet Union at least as early as 1946. And of course after the KGB found out about Project MKUltra they did even more research to counter _their_ agents being brainwashed,” said Steve. “Hydra had infiltrated both sides, so they got all the research.”

“So, is it like a Jedi mind trick? Oh, um, that’s from a movie…“ Jasper had been ten when Lupe took him to see it—

“I know, I’ve watched it. It’s not like a Jedi mind trick, ‘cause it’s not restricted to the weak-minded. The Karpov technique involves destroying brain tissue, and even things like the Faustus method that don’t damage the brain still show definite physical changes on MRI scans.” Steve fixed Lupe with his gaze. “Your son wasn’t weak-minded.”

Her eyes started itching.

“You think I don’t know that? I’m the one who had to make him eat his vegetables every day.”

* * *

“And when you were questioning him, did you…?”

“We didn’t physically harm him, but we did deliberately make him fear for his life…one of my associates kicked him off a building.” Steve caught himself softening the truth to make himself sound more innocent. “On my orders.”

It took all of Steve’s willpower not to fidget during the awkward silence that followed.

“He did, um, I think he might have been fighting the brainwashing, because he told us exactly what we needed to know almost immediately. SHIELD protocol for interrogations is to delay as long as possible with silence and irrelevant information, then lie,” said Steve. “And…Hydra had him killed shortly after that.”

Lupe nodded, considering. Steve still felt the urge to fidget.

“Actually,” he said, “I found several documents saying that Sitwell—Jasper deployed the Winter Soldier during the Battle of New York. _Against_ Pierce’s orders to keep him on standby until further notice, which means Jasper was definitely fighting his brainwashing to do it.”

* * *

“Who are we getting this for, again?” asked Sam.

“Someone I’d trust with the fate of the world,” said Natasha. “If the CIA have bugged Steve’s apartment, it might be better if you don’t know the details.”

“Fair enough.”

Immediate trust still made Natasha’s head spin, but she kept walking as though nothing had happened.

They continued to walk down the hall, and approached a couple of guards standing outside a door. Natasha made a show of checking her tablet. Sam continued to look comfortable with the firearm at his side; he might not have spy training, but he could play himself just fine.

“We’re here to pick up the GH samples.” Natasha nodded her head at the door.

“I…beg your pardon?” said one of the guards.

“Coulson wants them transferred to a more secure location, since we don’t know how many of Garrett’s men are still out there,” said Natasha.

“Coulson didn’t say anything about a transfer…” said the other guard.

Natasha let confusion and then irritation show on her face, in preparation for complaining about the imaginary agent who should have sent the guards a memo.

“Typical,” said the first guard, rolling his eyes. “Of course he doesn’t bother to tell us what’s going on.”

The guards stepped out of the way to let Natasha and Sam through. Natasha flashed them a sympathetic look before going through the door.

“Well that was easier than expected,” she said once Sam had closed the door behind them.

“Guess this Coulson guy’ll re-evaluate his compartmentalization policies after this,” said Sam.

_We can hope._ Coulson had always had slightly odd ideas about what constituted need-to-know information, and Natasha was very aware that a Hydra agent could break into this facility just as easily as she could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't quite know what I'm doing with the update schedule yet, sorry. 
> 
> Relevant sidestory: I came up with the bright idea of re-watching season 2 of _Agents of SHIELD_ , slowly, while pausing frequently to take notes. (The word "bright" is being used sarcastically.) I remembered being confused a lot when watching it before, particularly during the first two episodes, and figured if I could just pay close enough attention everything would make sense.  
> Everything did not make sense.  
> Among other, smaller weirdnesses ("you've evaded us for a whole winter", doing fancy psychological manipulation in conjunction with a fancy finger-print-chair thing when _there are easier ways of getting finger prints_ ), Coulson's decision to withhold the quinjet extraction plan from Hartley, Idaho, and Hunter put his whole team at a tactical disadvantage while providing no discernible strategic advantage. And then it got people killed, because knowing that completing the mission will result in a better getaway vehicle changes whether aborting the mission or continuing the mission is Hartley's best chance for survival.  
> Possibility 1: Hartley &co are all loyal agents, in which case compartmentalizing information accomplishes nothing. Meanwhile, withholding important information reduces their efficiency at best and gets people killed at worst.  
> Possibility 2: one of Hartley &co is giving information to Hydra or Talbot, in which case the adversary already knows a) where Coulson's team is going, b) when they're going there, and c) more than half of what they'll do once there. In other words, Coulson's team is screwed, whether or not the adversary knows about the quinjet part.  
> It's as if Coulson is keeping secrets as an end in itself, even when it compromises other, more important goals. Like keeping his team alive. 
> 
>    
> "The SSR found evidence of brainwashing methods being used in the Soviet Union at least as early as 1946" is a reference to events in _Agent Carter_. 
> 
> Project MKUltra was a CIA project that studied potential mind control, behavior modification, and interrogation techniques, among other things. It involved an appalling lack of consent, informed or otherwise. Many of the details are not known because most of the documentation was destroyed in 1973.


	34. Chapter 34

“Are you insane?” said Akela.

“No, listen, I did my research—or at least, I read Steve Rogers’ blog posts about how Hydra’s brainwashing works…” said Mike.

“You let the world’s most dangerous assassin near your son because of some random guy’s bl—wait, did you say Steve Rogers?”

Mike grinned. “Yeah. And yes, I mean _that_ Steve Rogers. He wrote an overview of Hydra’s brainwashing in general, plus a couple of more detailed posts about particular techniques, which conveniently included the ones listed in the Winter Soldier’s file.

“Oh, he also wrote a post about the ethics of acting under duress, where he—he doesn’t think we’re bad people.”

Akela had been trying to decide if she was paranoid or if it was _suspiciously_ convenient that Cap wrote about exactly the brainwashing techniques they needed to know about, and Mike’s last comment caught her off guard.

“He doesn’t…?”

“No, he said that—that guilt has to do with what you choose to do, and choosing between doing something and being tortured isn’t the same as choosing between doing something and having nothing happen; and that as far as predicting someone’s behavior, you can’t tell what they’ll choose to do on their own based on what they did while coerced,” said Mike.

Akela had spent so much time building mental defenses against other people’s condemnation, that the lack thereof—from someone who fought Hydra during World War II, no less—left her feeling off-balance.

* * *

“How much do you know about the Winter Soldier?” asked Akela.

Dr. Andrew Garner looked up from the papers he was grading. “I know that his file says he’s diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and that this is _not_ the same thing as dissociative identity disorder, which puts me one up on most news anchors. Why do you ask?”

“I want to know what I’m getting into before I walk into a room with him.”

Andrew’s eyes widened slightly. “Do I want to know?”

“Good question,” Akela said with a hint of a smile.

Andrew sighed.

“I’ll look into it. Is there a deadline for this encounter, or are you thinking of wandering into a room with the Winter Soldier at a random time?”

* * *

“There’s yogurt in the fridge,” said Akela, picking up her own container off the counter and putting a spoonful in her mouth.

Andrew nodded, and dug around until he found the lone boysenberry yogurt in a sea of blueberry and vanilla. He picked up a spoon off the drying rack.

“So, did you find out how likely the Winter Soldier is to try to kill me for kicks and giggles?” she asked wryly.

“For kicks and giggles? Not likely. For other reasons—I’m not sure. His main file says he has paranoid schizophrenia with persecutory and grandiose delusions, which doesn’t make people inherently more violent. But there are a number of violent incidents which they attribute to his psychosis and refer to as behavioral confabulations.”

Akela blinked pointedly, presumably to remind Andrew that she didn’t know psychological jargon.

“He has false memories. And he’s attacked people based on them,” he said. “Hydra dealt with it by using some sort of memory wipe procedure that would be at home in a 1950’s asylum; the file says that if he starts thinking Hydra’s out to get him or that he’s a famous historical marksman it means he’s becoming delusional again.”

“That’s not a delusion.”

“What?”

“Hydra wanting to hurt him. It says right at the top of his file that he’s an involuntary asset.”

Andrew nodded. It was possible that the original diagnosis was from before the Winter Soldier encountered Hydra, but Akela’s point would still stand.

“I think that might also have been one of the parts that was just copied and translated from the KGB file, and the USSR had a history of locking up political dissidents by pretending they were insane, so…” He shrugged. “His diagnosis might be accurate, or it might be completely fabricated.”

Though usually Soviet psychiatrists had used a diagnosis of ‘sluggish schizophrenia with sparse symptoms’ for political dissidents rather than paranoid schizophrenia, because the latter required actual symptoms for diagnosis.

Andrew took a bite of his yogurt.

“Anything else?” asked Akela.

“Yes, but I don’t know how much I can tell you about what that something _is_. Neuroscience isn’t really my field.” Andrew took a deep breath. “Hydra deliberately damaged the Winter Soldier’s hippocampi and frontal lobes, causing retrograde amnesia and executive dysfunction. More specifically, they wanted to stop him from accessing old episodic memory and from generating and setting goals on his own. Practice is messier than theory, and other cognitive functions got damaged in the process.

“Problem was, the Soldier recovers from injuries faster and heals more completely than a regular human, and this extends to his brain tissue—whatever Hydra destroys, eventually regrows. Hydra dealt with this by re-inflicting the damage periodically, but—“

Andrew broke off and chuckled.

“What?” said Akela.

“One of the big selling points of the Winter Soldier was that he learns quickly—and the parts of his brain that didn’t keep getting destroyed started learning to compensate for the parts that did. So his brain has been slowly rewiring itself, to the point where Hydra isn’t sure anymore what neural structures carry out what functions.” Andrew took another bite. “In the mid-sixties Hydra found out that the memory wipes also gave the Soldier prosopagnosia—face-blindness—and then in about 2000 they ran tests and discovered that he definitely _wasn’t_ face-blind anymore.”

That was a fun report to read; even through the professional phrasing, Andrew could tell how terrified the Hydra scientists were at the thought of the Winter Soldier regaining all his cognitive functions.

“So…did they know what his brain could do as of Romanov’s leak?” asked Akela.

“Nope,” said Andrew. “They ran a bunch of tests to make sure he still had amnesia and executive dysfunction; beyond that, they really only cared about whether the brainwashing still worked.”

Akela stared into space for a moment.

“If you were Hydra, and you captured a marksman good enough to have made a name for himself, and he refused to work for you because of what he remembered about Hydra—what would you do?” she finally said. “You know, if you had the technology to wipe someone’s memory.”

Andrew exhaled slowly. “You think the historical figure thing isn’t a delusion.”

“I think it would make an awfully convenient lie,” said Akela.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I am ignoring season 3 of AoS, as well as any plot events or character revelations that may occur in season 3. 
> 
> The technical definitions of 'psychosis' and 'psychotic' are very different from how they get used colloquially. 'Psychosis' or 'a psychotic break' means some sort of break from reality, such as delusions or hallucinations. To use examples from Firefly:  
> In the episode where Mal plays a cruel joke on Simon and various characters respond by calling Mal 'psychotic', this is not actually an example of psychosis.  
> In the episode where River sees a bunch of leaves all over the ground and picks up an object she perceives to be a stick, when actually there are no leaves and the object is a gun, this _is_ an example of psychosis.  
>  In the episode where River attacks Jayne out of the blue, this is not an example of psychosis.  
> In episodes where River hears voices that no one else can, this may or may not be psychosis given that River is canonically psychic. 
> 
> Schizophrenia has a large assortment of possible symptoms, including hallucinations (especially auditory), delusions, disorganized thinking, disorganized speech, social difficulties, flat affect, etc. Different individuals have different subsets of symptoms. Schizophrenia has traditionally been divided into several subtypes (paranoid, catatonic, etc.), though there is debate as to how useful this is.  
> Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, is often mixed up with schizophrenia because 'schizophrenia' literally means 'split mind'. 
> 
> Undamaged areas of the brain learning to compensate for damaged areas is how people regain skills after a traumatic brain injury. One of the major factors in how well someone is able to recover is how much undamaged brain tissue they have left; so the distributed damage from anoxic brain injury (the kind that Fitz has) is often harder to deal with than the localized damage from acceleration-deceleration injuries. (One of the other major factors in how well someone can recover is how self-aware they are about their condition.) 
> 
> Hydra would have had to be _very_ careful in damaging parts of Bucky's hippocampi and frontal lobes, because those general parts of the brain also handle a lot of functions that the Winter Soldier would need to carry out missions. Bucky's existing episodic/autobiographical memory was a problem for Hydra, but his semantic memory (memory of facts and figures) would be necessary for missions. Goal generation and goal setting could potentially cause a problem for Hydra, but pretty much every other part of executive functioning (making plans, prioritizing goals, initiating tasks, continuing tasks, stopping tasks, controlling attention, etc.) would be necessary for missions. Problem-solving and basic reasoning skills would be necessary for missions. Executive dysfunction can sometimes be compensated for through sheer force of will, but this is haphazard and also gets really tiring really fast.  
>  Basically, Hydra would need very precise knowledge of which parts of the brain do what.


	35. Chapter 35

Sam wrote ‘N said the apartment might be bugged’ on a piece of paper and held it up for Steve to read. Steve silently considered for a moment.

“Well, that would be an _incredibly_ stupid move on the CIA’s part,” said Steve, enunciating clearly and pitching his voice to carry, “because if I ever found even a single bug in this apartment, I would post pictures on every social media site I know the name of and call every journalist who’s ever asked me for an interview. I’m sure the public would want to know if our _foreign_ intelligence agency were snooping on Captain America in his New York apartment.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up, and he started laughing. “Oh, man, that would be…that would be _just a little bit_ bad for their PR.”

Steve grinned back. Sam clapped him on the shoulder.

“See? There was an upside to your stint as a dancing monkey,” said Sam, remembering the drawing Steve had shown him. “It taught you about PR and prepared you to be able to make potential eavesdroppers piss themselves.”

* * *

“Ugh, don’t get me started on the vigilantes,” said Agent Newell, Chang and Jepsen’s friend who worked at the FBI. “If they really wanted to help, they would _call stuff in_ , not run off killing Hydra agents who could have been interrogated, or burning down bases that were full of evidence and files—”

Chang and Jepsen groaned in unison.

“Oh, you guys heard about that one?” said Newell.

“The bank in DC that had the charred remains of the equipment Hydra used on the Winter Soldier?“ said Chang.

“Yeah, we heard about that one,” said Jepsen.

“Romanov’s leak only released Hydra’s digital files, and _so much_ information about the Winter Soldier is just completely absent…” Chang said grumpily.

“And it was probably in that base, in paper form, until—” Jepsen made an upwards motion with her hand, “fwoosh.”

The three of them were silent for a moment.

“So, how’s working with Captain America going?” said Newell.  

“Um…” said Chang.

“He’s told us that he’s doing _something_ to fight Hydra, but not _what_. Though apparently it involves sneaking away from his protection detail in the middle of the night and continuing to live at a compromised location,” said Jepsen. “Bryan tried to approach him to get him to start collaborating with us—”

“—and Rogers turned him down, citing security concerns.” Chang’s expression turned gleeful. “Bryan is _so mad_ , apparently Rogers suggested that Bryan could be Hydra.”

“Oh, _no_ ,” said Newell, grinning.

“Oh, _yes_ ,” said Jepsen. “He’s so offended by the suggestion that he could _possibly_ be that sort of monster; it would be hilarious if he weren’t so insufferable. Of course, we still have to figure out what Rogers is up to so we can plan around it.”

“You could bug his apartment,” said Newell.

Chang squinted at Newell.

“That would be _extremely_ against the rules,” he said.

Newell shrugged. “Didn’t stop Nick Fury.”

“Yeah, and look what happened to his organization,” said Jepsen. “Everyone who isn’t completely distracted by Hydra is pissed by how often SHIELD broke the rules because it was convenient.”

* * *

Pepper woke to the smell of burning, breathing hard. Confused dream images faded from her head. She opened her eyes to see flecks of ash floating through the air and the singed remnants of her sheets.

“Ms. Potts, it appears you have just had a nightmare. Shall I inform Mr. Stark?” said Jarvis.

“Minute,” said Pepper.

She rubbed her hands over her face, feeling unburnt skin and hair, then looked around to inspect the damage. The sheets had burned through to the fire-retardant layer, and her nightgown was gone. _Dammit, I liked that nightgown._ At least she wasn’t glowing anymore.

“Don’t wake up Tony,” said Pepper.

As much as she appreciated Tony wanting to provide emotional support every time she had a nightmare, it wasn’t always what Pepper needed. Besides, he had plenty of his own problems, and Pepper knew from experience that Tony’s heart was often bigger than his ability to follow through.

“Mr. Stark is already awake,” said Jarvis.

“Hm? Then tell him I’m going to the kitchen to make myself steamed milk or something,” said Pepper.

She slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position and slid off the bed. After dusting most of the ash off her body, she pulled on a blue silk dressing gown and left the room.

* * *

Tony came into the kitchen talking about how he was going to make steamed milk for Pepper, trailing off when he saw the mug in her hands.

“…oh,” said Tony.

“Oh,” repeated Pepper. “So did you also have nightmares? Did we manage to coordinate that?”

“No, I was up late reading—“

“Tony.”

“—going through more of Hydra’s files—“

“Tony, it’s 3:40 in the morning.”

“…you might, maybe, have a point with that,” said Tony.

The two of them were silent for a moment.

“What was it this time?” said Pepper.

“The thing with my parents again,” said Tony. “I—I don’t know, it was decades ago, I already mourned them, I thought I…it shouldn’t matter _how_ they died, they’re still just as gone whether it’s an accident or Hydra’s doing, it shouldn’t make this much difference…”

“Apparently it does though,” said Pepper.

“Something in the report doesn’t add up, something’s _off_ ,” said Tony. “But I can’t figure out what.”

“That might have something to do with it being 3:40 in the morning,” said Pepper, taking a sip of her milk.

She set the mug down on the counter and moved closer to Tony, wrapping her hands around the back of his neck. She nudged slightly and he rested his forehead against hers.

“Sorry, I’m hogging the conversation when you’re the one who was woken up by nightmares…”

“Talking isn’t how I deal with things,” said Pepper.

She tilted her head and kissed him.


	36. Chapter 36

The crunch of snow under boots echoed through the silence.

“Steve?”

The word came out as a raspy breath. The boot-steps did not pause in their approach.

“Steve?”

Forcing the sound out of his throat hurt, but there was a slight hesitation in the still-approaching footsteps. Voices too soft to make out. Bucky tried to blink the blood out of his left eye so he could see.

“Steve, is that you?” he managed to whisper.

A man in a Red Army uniform leaned over him. _Not Steve…_

He craned his neck to get a better look, and a cat made a very indignant noise right next to his ear. _What—?_

James was curled up in the kitten box. The taste of blood faded from his mouth; the only thing blocking his vision was an annoyed kitten stepping on his eye. Ninochka was inside his shirt, and the rest of the kittens had stashed themselves all over James’ body and clothes.

He still felt fragile and scared and alone, not sure if he’d been dreaming or remembering. James pet the animals that were within reach, and let the warm little bodies anchor him in place.

* * *

Coulson strode into the room, expecting to find his whole team hanging out. Instead, he found Trip sitting alone with a book.

“Where is everyone?” asked Coulson.

“Hartley, Idaho, and Hunter went out to get drinks together, May’s running errands, and Skye’s visiting her friend James. I’m not sure what Fitz is up to,” said Trip.

“Aw, man. I’ve been looking forward to this chance to spend time with the team for a week,” said Coulson.

“Yeah, that might’ve worked better if you’d told all of us a week ago,” said Trip.

“Well. At least I can chat with you,” said Coulson.

“Actually,” Trip held up his book, “I’m kind of at the climax. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Oh.”

Trip went back to reading.

“Wait a minute, did you just say Skye’s going on a date?” said Coulson.

Trip sighed and lowered his book. “Whatever Skye’s doing with her nonagenarian friend, I don’t think it’s romantic.”

* * *

Akela walked into Mike’s kitchen knowing Skye and the Winter Soldier would be there; neither of them quite matched her expectations.

The fifty-year-old ghost story didn’t look any older than Akela. Moreover, between his large eyes, the soft waves hanging around his face, and the small animals in his arms, lap, and on his shoulders, he distinctly reminded her of a Disney princess.

Skye’s face looked shorter and younger with bangs, but when she stood up and walked toward Akela she moved like a fighter.

Skye glanced at Akela’s glass eye, but didn’t say anything.  

“It’s good to see you again,” said Akela.

She noticed a callus on Skye’s trigger finger as they shook hands. _Oh good, someone’s teaching her not to release the magazine by accident._

* * *

“I’ll need to know about all of the tech they implanted,” said Akela.

“I wrote up a list of file numbers for records of implantation, technical info, and so on,” said Skye. She handed Akela a piece of paper, then turned to James. “You said you had paper files with more medical details?”

James’ gut twisted uncomfortably, although he wasn’t completely sure why.

“You need to know about the trackers?” he said.

“Anything with a transmitter is potentially a threat. All it takes is the wrong person finding out what signal to send, and they’ve got you at their mercy,” said Akela. “The one exception is if the transmitter can’t receive any signals or be turned on remotely once you’ve turned it off.”

“That’s what I have for my eye. Means I get my privacy, but if something comes up where it’s useful to have a video feed, that’s an option too,” said Mike.

“I handle the tech, and I have a friend who handles the surgery.” The edge of Akela’s mouth twitched upward. “I can patch people up in the field so they don’t die, but he can stitch people up so they’re pretty when they heal.”

_“Seriously? It woke up again? How much anesthetic does this thing need?”_

James felt like he was going to throw up; he focused on controlling his breathing.

“James? Are you okay?” said Skye.

James had no idea how to answer. His whole body started shaking slightly.

Skye gripped his flesh hand; the pressure was…the pressure was good.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly.

“You do if you ever plan on pissing off Hydra,” said Akela. “Or what’s left of it.”

_Oh_. He’d been trying really hard not to think about how completely and utterly screwed he was if Hydra ever found out what he’d done to protect Steve. Killing the asset management team was so far into the realm of forbidden it wasn’t even funny.

“Personally? I plan on taking down every. Last. One of them. And if they know my name before they go, even better.” Akela shrugged. “But if you want to go to ground and hope they never think to look for you in earnest, be my guest.”

_“Battle-tested, the Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission: taking down Hydra, the Nazi rogue science division.”_

The world tilted sideways.

Since killing the team that was supposed to manage him, the soldier had been coasting on his protocols for lying low. James realized that while he had plenty of temporary objectives—information acquisition, skill acquisition, food acquisition—he had no idea what his main purpose was anymore. His role as a protector of innocents from corrupt people in power had turned out to be a lie, fueled by ‘history lessons’ that were about as factual as bedtime stories about knights fighting dragons.

Except apparently he’d had the answer since going to the Smithsonian.

_I have a mission._

_I have a mission, I have a mission, I have a mission!_

* * *

 

James’ face didn’t change very much at Akela’s words, but on the May-Barnes scale of facial expressions he looked overjoyed. Skye didn’t know exactly how she had expected him to react, but this definitely wasn’t it.


	37. Chapter 37

“That just leaves the question of payment,” said Akela.

If James really couldn’t pay, she wasn’t going to leave him vulnerable to Hydra, but stating this upfront made a lot of people more likely to fudge the truth about their financial situation.

Judging by the Winter Soldier’s deer-in-the-headlights look, this was going to be another unpaid job. _Great._

“…I spent most of the money I had on vet bills,” he said. “I can—I can look for another job…”

“I…hang on…” Skye pulled out her phone.

Akela exhaled slowly. She couldn’t imagine that job search going very well without a resume or any references. As for the alternative…

Garrett had forced a lot of people to work for him, meaning Akela had a whole network of people who would understand James’ situation and possibly help. However, that would mean giving information—names, faces, locations—to someone the government was extremely motivated to catch. _If the Winter Soldier breaks under interrogation—_

It was already bad enough that he knew about Mike and Ace. Akela wasn’t keen on putting more people in danger.

“Okay, I don’t have a _ton_ of savings, but I can definitely help,” said Skye, looking up from her phone.

Akela decided that since Skye had found James in the first place, he was her responsibility.

There was a thump, and Akela looked over to see that Ace had dropped a math workbook on the table.

“Well, that’s one option,” said Mike.

Akela became sharply uncomfortable; she was missing something, and she _hated_ not having complete information. “What’s an option?”

“Ace could use a math tutor,” said Mike.

“Would that be like when Skye and I helped?” said James.

“Except I wouldn’t be there,” said Skye.

James looked at Ace, considering.

“I could do that.”

Ace smiled and bounced up and down.

* * *

When Sharon showed up at Avengers Tower for lunch, Natasha was waiting next to the elevator.

“Hey.” Natasha smiled and pushed off from where she was leaning against the wall.

“Hey,” said Sharon.

They exchanged a quick hug and got into the elevator together. The doors slid closed.

“I got the GH-120 for you,” said Natasha, pulling out a small vial. “The person this is for…”

“—will only get it after freely giving her consent,” said Sharon.

“ _Informed_ consent.” Natasha’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Red Room recruiters found little girls living in orphanages or on the street and told us we could come to a _special_ school, where we’d learn special skills, serve our country, and always have enough to eat. We didn’t think to ask…well, I didn’t think to ask anything after the promise of regular meals.”

Sharon felt like the floor had been yanked out from under her. _What kind of sick bastard—_

SHIELD company culture had held that lies of omission weren’t _really_ lies; Sharon suddenly wondered why she hadn’t questioned that more.

She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts.

“I…she’s not a child. But I’ll make sure that she understands, before accepting a ‘yes’. I’ll lay out all the relevant information, including the parts I don’t want to, and make sure she understands every part of it before accepting a ‘yes’,” said Sharon. “And if she says no, that’ll be the end of it.”

Natasha’s entire posture loosened; between two people with their training, this was deliberate communication.

They were silent for a few moments as the elevator continued to zoom upward.

“You know, you didn’t use to talk about your past. Aside from making up elaborate stories to troll people,” said Sharon.

“Yeah, well, every scrap of information I ever gave SHIELD about it didn’t use to be on the Internet for anyone to read,” said Natasha.

* * *

“Hey Steve, I wanted to talk to you about something,” said Sam.

Steve closed the refrigerator door, orange juice in hand. “Sure.”

Sam hesitated for a moment as he considered how to describe codependent relationships without using psychobabble.

“So the current situation with Bucky is a huge improvement over when he was trying to—you know,” he said. “And no one goes from severely messed up to healthy overnight; I just wanted to check that you know Bucky feeding you like a baby bird isn’t a healthy place for him to stay.”

Steve paused partway through pouring his juice. “I’m pretty sure baby birds get food dropped directly into their mouths.”

“You know what I mean,” said Sam. “Taking care of other people is a good thing, but like lots of other good things it can get warped. Sometimes people start investing their sense of worth or identity in the fact that they take care of a particular person.”

“Okay…” Halfway through putting away the juice, Steve stopped. “Wait—do you want any?”

“Yeah, thanks. They end up needing to be needed. If the person they’re caring for stops needing their help, it threatens their idea of who they are,” said Sam. “If you get upset at the idea of your friend becoming self-sufficient, something has gone very wrong.”

“Oh.”

Sam got out a glass and picked up the juice from where Steve left it on the counter. “It’s also a problem ‘cause if they get tired or busy and can’t keep helping, either that day or week, or longer term…”

“They don’t know who they are or if they’re worthwhile,” finished Steve. “Okay, I understand how that’s bad. I don’t think that’s what Bucky is doing, though.”

Sam took a sip of juice and waited for Steve for elaborate.

“Bringing people food, or other gifts—it’s how he shows affection. Always has been. Besides, when I was eleven he started fussing over my asthma, so I shoved him in a mud puddle and told him not to treat me like a baby.” One side of Steve’s mouth quirked upward. “It got the point across.”

“Does he remember that now?” asked Sam.

Steve’s face fell.

“Hey man, you know him better than I do; it might be exactly like you said. I just know from experience that the needing to be needed thing ends badly, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for it,” said Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the irregular posting schedule; I'm trying, there are just a number of difficulties on my end. 
> 
> I've seen a number of fics and meta posts playing with the idea of Bucky being upset about the serum because it means Steve doesn't need him anymore--and I honestly can't tell if they're romanticizing codependent relationships or simply depicting one.   
> Anyway, being compassionate and altruistic--which both Sam and Bucky are--makes it easier to accidentally slip into the caretaker role in a codependent relationship. This can look like the "need to be needed" situation that Sam describes; in milder forms, it looks like an unhealthy lack of boundaries when it comes to the other person, which is likely to lead to exhaustion and bitterness in the long term.   
> That's all assuming that both parties are basically good people who mean well. It's also possible for one of the people in the codependent relationship to be toxic or abusive; the codependency then makes it harder for the other person to leave.   
> (The backstory I have in mind for Sam is that he had a friend who needed a lot of help, which ended up wearing down his usual boundaries, which gradually shifted into the "need to be needed" situation until Sam realized what was going on. At which point he stepped back, took a deep breath, and re-evaluated the life choices that led to that situation.)


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Rape Threat" tag applies to this chapter.

James nudged the last tumbler into place, turned the knob on the formerly locked door, and stepped into the apartment.

He had considered getting rid of the blanket the kittens soiled instead of dealing with the mess, but couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away a perfectly good blanket that just needed washing. He had also considered dipping into his remaining cash to use a laundromat—the blanket was far too big to wash in a sink—but kept twitching at the thought of spending money when he didn’t have to.

So James was breaking into the apartment of a reporter who had made some particularly unflattering comments about him, and using the man’s washing machine while he was at work. _Revenge via water bill._

While he was waiting for the washing machine to finish up, James got bored and wandered into the kitchen. He suddenly became aware of how hungry he was. _You know what? Saying I’m ‘too much of a psychopath for Hydra’ because ‘in 1958 the Winter Soldier went on a killing spree, murdering everyone in sight’ without mentioning the fact that every casualty was a Hydra agent—information that’s_ right there _in the incident report—isn’t just unflattering; it’s stupid._ Stupidity clearly warranted revenge via water bill and missing food.

By the time James went to move the blanket to the dryer, his stomach was taut from all the hot food he had eaten. Because there was an oven and a stove _and_ a microwave, so obviously he had to try using all of them.

When James pulled the blanket out of the dryer, it had shrunk and felted from the heat; he became irritated at the fancy 21st century technology for having unexpected side effects.

As he examined the blanket, the smell of clean wool, the texture of felt under his bone fingers, and the radiating warmth snagged on something in his brain.

_“Buggy!”_

_Bucky groaned._

_“Buggy! Wa’e up!”_

_“Go ‘way, ‘m sleeping.”_

_“Up! Waaake up.”_

_“Nnnnnn.”_

_“Wanna play wi’ Buggy.”_

_Bucky didn’t respond. His blanket started sliding sideways. It slipped off the bed, leaving him suddenly exposed to the cold air._

_“Becca!” He rolled over to see her several feet away from the bed, holding onto the blanket._

_“Buggy play!”_

_“Beccaaaaaa you’re awful.” Bucky rolled out of bed._

_Becca started to bounce as he walked toward her. Bucky grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around himself, and crawled back into bed._

_“Buggy!” Becca sounded deeply betrayed._

* * *

Skye was staring intently at her code, trying to figure out what sort of logic mistake or typo would cause the buggy output she was seeing, when May walked into the room.

“Coulson wants to talk to you.”

Skye was still contemplating for-loops, so it took a moment to process May’s words. She stood up as May walked back out of the room.

“Wait, so Coulson’s here?” Skye asked as she caught up. “I thought he left on another trip.”

“We’ll explain in a moment,” said May.

They walked into Coulson’s office and May shut the door.

“I’ve been interrogating Ward,” said Coulson. “He’s asked to see you.”

_“Maybe I’ll just_ take _what I want, wake something up in you.”_

Skye remembered Ward’s eyes flicking up and down her body, threat implicit but perfectly clear.

“I’m not going anywhere near that creep,” she said.

There was more emotion in Skye’s voice than she had intended. It wasn’t that she was afraid of Ward, because she _wasn’t_.

She’d just spent an awful lot of years strategizing and looking over her shoulder because of men like Ward who thought they had the right to just take what they wanted.

“He’s agreed to give us intelligence about Hydra, but if only if he talks to you,” said Coulson. “I don’t like the idea of doing anything on Ward’s terms, but it might be the strategic choice here; we need the information.”

“Assuming anything he tells us is the truth,” said May.

“Assuming that,” said Coulson.

Skye hesitated as images flashed through her mind of potential adoptive parents telling her sorry, but it just wasn’t a good fit. She wanted to be a good SHIELD agent—to belong here—very, very badly.

Skye shoved those images away firmly.

“Yeah? Maybe it’s time for him to grow up and learn that just because he wants something doesn’t mean he gets it,” she said.

The pause after Skye finished speaking felt very long.

Coulson nodded. “I’ll pass on that you’re not interested.”

* * *

James—Bucky? he remembered being called ‘Bucky’ and the name fitting like a glove, in a way that ‘James’ just didn’t—left the apartment and made his way back through the streets.

He’d never remembered something happy before. Not with that much clarity. _Well, for a definition of ‘happy’ that includes deep irritation at little sisters with way too much energy in the morning._ Everything more solid than hazy outlines and random facts had always been about Hydra doing things to him.

James clung to the image of wispy curls, chubby cheeks, and little fingers that felt real enough to touch; warmth spread through his chest.

* * *

“An accident. A freaking—both my parents, gone, just like that, and Hydra didn’t even do it on purpose. ‘Oops’.” Tony gestured with the hand holding his glass of scotch, and affected an accent. “’Well I tried to make him think he’d gone crazy like you asked, Comrade Pierce, but then he swerved into oncoming traffic!’”

“I don’t understand,” said Bruce.

“Hydra in SHIELD—SHIELD-Hydra—SHIELDra—used a lot of the same codes as SHIELD. 0-3-2 is an assassination order. But the report on my parents’…my parents’—it doesn’t say 0-3-2, it says 1-7-4. Gaslighting operation,” said Tony.

“Making people question their own perceptions,” said Bruce. “Why…?”

“From what I could figure out? They didn’t want him affecting SHIELD policy anymore, but they wanted him to keep inventing weapons,” said Tony. “No one’s gonna leave a crazy guy in charge of their agency.”

“But they sent an assassin.” Bruce rubbed his forehead and tried to make sense of the whole thing.

“They sent a ghost story,” said Tony. “The Winter Soldier wasn’t supposed to be real, if Dad started seeing him randomly…it’d be like trying to convince his coworkers that no really, he saw Santa Claus. Except more murdery.”

Bruce wanted to say something comforting, but he was having trouble coming up with anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now seems like a good time for a quick note about CA:CW, since the time leading up to the release involved so much speculation about the Starks' deaths:   
> 1\. Yes, I have seen it  
> 2\. No, I won't spoil it  
> 3\. No, I'm not taking new canon into account


	39. Chapter 39

James sat at the bus stop, heart still racing. He held his phone and stared in its general direction while he waited for his body to figure out that he wasn’t in any more danger than usual.

James needed to go to DC, where he stashed the files from the bank vault. He had planned to take the train.

_He tried to stretch his fingers farther, but then the railing broke and he was weightless._

_“Bucky! No!”_

Apparently his brain had permanently labeled trains as an unacceptably high-risk transportation option.

* * *

Skye split her ponytail between both hands, then tugged to tighten it.

“We could keep working with sticks today, or we could start on knives…” said May.

“How about the less pointy option. I don’t like the idea of accidentally killing someone,” said Skye.

“The practice knives are rubber,” said May.

“Not what I meant,” said Skye.

May gave her a long, considering look. “Knives are particularly risky, but you can accidentally kill someone empty-hand or with blunt weapons.”

“I…um.” Skye shifted uncomfortably. “I guess I sort of knew that. Hadn’t thought about it very much.”

“You should. There’s no time to think in a fight, and a lot of moves that _might_ kill your opponent. You need to already know what you’re willing to do,” said May.

Skye nodded slowly.

“Until then, less pointy option?” She smiled nervously.

* * *

Under a bridge several miles upriver from the helicarrier wreckage, James rolled up his sleeve and reached for the submerged chain he knew was attached to the bridge support. He pulled it up hand over hand until he got to the SHIELD-issue waterproof duffel bag on the other end.

James pulled the overstuffed bag onto land and unzipped it. He remembered packing files, weapons, ammo, and food.

By the time he found the files, the ground around him was littered with fake IDs and passports with his picture, three times as much ammo as he remembered, two hard drives, an assortment of medical equipment, a small crossbow with sleep darts, multiple types of grenades, half a dozen flash drives, at least three pounds of cyclonite, uniforms and disguises, suppressors, a variety of gadgets, and extra folded-up duffel bags.

James rubbed his knuckles over his eyes and tried to remember exactly what happened after the helicarrier fiasco.

His memory of the first couple days was a blur. Ditched protective gear, untucked pant-legs, and a hoodie had made a civilian disguise; an underground parking garage had made a lot of concrete between his trackers and Hydra’s satellites. That had lasted until his deep conviction that the man with the shield needed to be protected was overridden by his fear of punishment.

After crawling back to the bank vault, he found out that Pierce was dead, that the team was surprised and delighted to find out the soldier hadn’t gone down with the helicarriers, and that their communications array was damaged.

One moment stood out brightly in his memory.

_“Newspapers say Rogers is in the hospital; didn’t say which one, but that shouldn’t be an issue for you, right? Just find the one with the most security, slip past them, and—“_

_The soldier panicked. He had to obey the handler was about to order Rogers’ death was_ mission noncompliant _, he had to protect the mission—_

_Can’t give orders without a larynx._

_After that the soldier had to keep going. There was evidence everywhere from the man’s torn carotid with nowhere to hide the body, they had words to make him sleep, and reprogramming was mission noncompliant._

After eliminating the asset management team, there had been hyperventilating. And ransacking the base. And gasoline and walking away from the building before the smoke started billowing out. There may or may not have been a shower.

There must have been a shower; he had walked past civilians, and civilians typically responded poorly to blood-spattered assassins.

James refocused himself on the task at hand. He flipped through the files; they were mostly in Russian, with a few in English. Some of them had diagrams showing the various implants in his body. He gathered those into a separate stack.

James pulled a small box out of the duffel bag, full of bottles and vials. After stumbling through _G-23 paxon hypochlorite_ , he gave up on trying to make sense of the labels and put it down.

Several knives, a submachine gun, and some det-cord later James finally unburied his rifle. He lifted it out carefully and felt his mouth stretch into a smile.

* * *

When Skye found Trip, he was reading something on his laptop.

“Can I talk to you? Or are you doing important stuff…?” she asked.

“Welllll, depending on your definition of important…” Trip turned his laptop around, revealing a webpage for an animal shelter. “It’s about twenty minutes from here, and they recently got new kittens. And before you ask, I checked and no one working here is allergic.”

Skye smiled.

“So what’s up,” asked Trip.

“Oh! Um…” Skye wasn’t quite sure how to put this. “I’m trying to figure out whether—or how often—to use potentially lethal fighting tactics; and May’s…not really the talkative type, so I sort of thought, maybe—”

“You want to know my policy on killing people in the field,” said Trip.

Trip’s words didn’t quite match up with what Skye wanted to know, but she wasn’t sure how to describe the difference.

“Something like that,” she said.

“It varies. When you’re up against people like Hydra, you wanna just end the fight as quick as possible, but with lots of other situations it gets more complicated—people who think you’re the bad guy, people who just happen to be in the way, bad guys you can’t kill without causing a PR disaster,” said Trip. “But depending on how you train, you can end up doing something lethal to the other guy before you have a chance to think about it. Guns add an extra level of risk, ‘cause you have to worry about things like stray bullets and over-penetration.”

It felt like Skye’s face had switched from autopilot to manual, so that she had to think consciously about how to arrange it into the right expression. Trip was definitely answering a different question than the one she wanted to know, but Skye had no idea how to put that into words.

Trip launched into an explanation about training in different styles, getting into the flow of one style and staying there, and matching violence level to the other person’s intent. Skye ended up using all her concentration on parsing what he was saying and keeping her face politely attentive, occasionally giving single-word responses.

* * *

James sat in the bus, doing his best to maintain casual body language despite barely being able to sit still. His ankle was looped through the handle of the half-filled duffel bag at his feet, and he was enjoying playing with ideas for how to use the contents. Obviously he couldn’t actually do anything until his hardware was removed, but that was no reason not to start strategizing. He was _good_ at this; it was what he was made for.

James felt a sense of déjà vu as he realized the bus was driving along the same stretch of road where he’d attacked Rogers and Romanova. _Not sure if I recognize it from being here or from the videos—_

There were flowers piled at the base of one of the bridge supports.

James forgot how to breathe. The bus continued to drive past as though nothing had happened; he half-stood as he turned around to keep looking at them.

The soldier wasn’t sure how long he spent staring after the flowers disappeared from view, his fingers pressed against the window. He slowly turned and sat back down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The good news for Bucky is that his brain hasn't labeled trains as 'unacceptably high-risk' _permanently_ so much as long-term. Gradual, controlled exposure therapy would allow him to desensitize himself. So maybe one day he gets close enough to the train station to hear the trains, then leaves and self-soothes, later he gets close enough to see the trains, then leaves and self-soothes, and so on until he can take the train somewhere without being bothered.  
>  This would require someone explaining both PTSD and desensitization (in person or via a book or article) in a way that makes sense to Bucky. Having a mindset of "it doesn't matter how much it hurts, you keep going until the mission's complete" was an important survival skill while he was with Hydra, and it would be really easy for him to fall back on that when he starts to get overwhelmed. Explaining it as "it's like stretching: as you push yourself, you first encounter mild pain that means you're making progress, then worse pain that means you're going to injure yourself; it's important to stop if you feel the second kind of pain" would get him to honestly gauge his own emotional reaction and stop when necessary. (Or at least, that's what he'd try to do; there would probably be some miscalculations along the way.)  
> Though even if Bucky were to learn all this, he has enough going on in his life that devoting lots of time and energy to eliminating one trigger (trains) that isn't even going to come up a lot probably isn't his highest priority right now.


	40. Chapter 40

James turned on the sink and started washing his hands. After all the soap washed away he twisted the knob further and added more soap.

He kept scrubbing at his hands, but no amount of soap and water made a dent in the certainty that he had blood on them.

Four civilians and two police officers had died in the causeway fight.

Melissa Jones, thirty-eight, was a solicitor; her colleagues described her as driven and highly-competent. One article said she did origami as a hobby, and showed a picture of a complicated-looking fish she made.

Frank Abbott, fifty-seven, was a janitor with no family and few friends, which might be why none of the articles James found had much information on him. His cat was sent to a local animal shelter.

Ryan Sanders, twenty-six, had been in the process of renovating the family restaurant; he left his wife with a building that was stripped bare, a large quantity of kitchen supplies, and a five-month-old baby.

Dorothy Patterson, ninety, had three children and five grandchildren, with a sixth one on the way. She had been a nurse during World War II.

Jason Lowe, thirty-five, had been a police officer for six years. When his girlfriend was going through his stuff afterwards, she found the engagement ring he never got the chance to offer her.

Michael Fisher, twenty-nine, had been a police officer for two years. His colleagues said he was often grumpy, sometimes downright abrasive; his little sister said he was paying her tuition so she could get a degree in chemical engineering.

James scrubbed harder; he could smell blood—

_Wait._

He could actually smell blood. James glanced down to see red swirls disappearing down the drain. His right hand was covered in small cuts and abrasions from being rubbed so hard against metal edges. James quickly turned off the water and grabbed a paper towel to dab at the cuts.

James didn’t know how long he spent waiting for the bleeding to stop. Red bloomed on white paper; it felt like something he was watching in a movie, rather than something real. When he could dab all of the cuts without leaving additional blood on the paper towel, James put his gloves back on and left the bathroom.

* * *

Skye fired one final shot into the cardboard target, removed the now-empty magazine from her pistol, and put them both down.

“Clear!” she said.

“Clear!” May repeated.

May pressed a button to bring the target closer for inspection.

Skye looked at the holes dotting the target’s chest. She had been thinking over her conversation with Trip; SHIELD only had so many icer rounds, and some of the components needed to make more were hard to get. Skye’s thoughts were starting to crystallize into two questions.

_What if training to be lethal means that I can’t do it when it actually counts, like when Mike was threatening Ward?_

_If I can become comfortable with killing, what if I end up becoming_ too _comfortable?_

The target came to a stop in front of May and Skye. The holes weren’t grouped as closely as they could be, but it was a huge improvement from when Skye first started training.

“Hey, I was wondering,” said Skye. “Legs are probably harder to hit than torsos, but they don’t have any vital organs in them, soooo…”

“If you nick someone’s femoral artery they’ll bleed out in minutes,” said May. “Though a determined opponent will probably keep attacking you during those minutes.”

“Oh,” said Skye.

“And if they don’t have access to medical care afterwards, any wound that gets infected could be lethal,” said May.

“Got it,” said Skye.

It was looking a lot like she was going to have to choose some level of risk and call it acceptable.

* * *

James flipped through the files he had recovered from the bank vault; flecks of scar tissue on his right hand caught the light differently than the surrounding skin. Ninochka was taking a nap nearby, and James could hear the kittens tussling inside their box.

James’ eyes scanned across the lines of text without taking anything in. Every few minutes he gave up on the file he was trying to read and picked up another one.

Accounts by witnesses at the causeway fight were incomplete. Two people saw the Winter Soldier shoot a grenade launcher at a police car; who exactly was responsible for the civilian deaths, or the numerous injuries, wasn’t clear.

James knew he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill the police officers. They were hostile combatants.

A handwritten note in the margin of the file James was holding caught his attention:

_The asset is rarely seen, but if you want it to eliminate witnesses, you must explicitly say that._

The last phrase was underlined six times, in slightly different shades of ink.

The soldier’s gut twisted. Ignoring someone’s existence was different from hunting them down, but it was also different from making sure they survived. _Not wanting to deliberately kill innocent bystanders_ isn’t good enough _if I just kill them by accident anyway._

James tossed the file aside with more force than was strictly necessary. Ninochka looked over sleepily.

The next file James picked up was particularly old; the front cover was on the verge of coming off where it was folded. He opened it carefully; the text was in Russian.

_< Name: Sgt. Barnes, James Buchanan_

_Asset type: Involuntary_

_Control method: see paragraph below_

_Notable skills: long-distance marksmanship, stealth, knife fighting, scouting, unarmed combat, blending into foreign civilian populations, short-term deception and manipulation_

_-_

_Sgt. Barnes is a highly effective operative because of his combat skills, his intelligence, and the physical enhancements that resulted from Dr. Zola’s experiments. His talents for creative problem-solving and rapid improvisation have proven particularly difficult to counter during escape attempts._

_None of the control methods we have tried so far have been satisfactory. In general, this is attributed to Sgt. Barnes’ stubbornness and deep hatred of Hydra; see more detailed reports on page 5. Advances in both the scientific understanding of the brain and the technological manipulation thereof are needed to solve these problems. Additionally, limiting direct contact with Sgt. Barnes to Soviet personnel only and keeping Hydra’s continued involvement secret from him may make this task easier. > _

James threw the folder against the wall; the front cover flew off and the pages sprawled across the floor. Ninochka startled, and the fur along her spine fluffed up. James threaded his fingers into his hair and gripped tightly.

“…not good enough.”

* * *

May had been working on paperwork long enough that it felt like her eyeballs were going to melt and dribble out of their sockets. So when Skye knocked on her office door it was a welcome distraction. Not that she was going to waste her breath admitting that.

“Hey, are you busy?” said Skye.

“What is it?” said May.

“I—sorry, there’s not really a good way of asking this, but I was wondering, about the whole using moves that might kill someone thing…” Skye shifted uncomfortably. “What happened in Bahrain. Was it…worth it? To save those SHIELD agents?”

A little girl’s laughter and the smell of gunpowder flashed through May’s mind. Years of practice kept her emotional reaction from showing.

May looked at the young agent in front of her, who burned with so much desire to help people that it rubbed off on everyone around her.

“You won’t do anything like Bahrain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up until now, I've had a queue of chapters that were already written, and just in need of editing before I posted them (sometimes the edits were minor, sometimes not-so-minor). The problem is that adding new chapters to the queue has been going too slowly to keep it filled; this is the last one that's fully drafted. I'm currently working on chapter 41, which is being a colossal pain. 
> 
> Anyway, it might be a good idea to click the subscribe button because the update schedule will be even more irregular than before, sorry about that.


	41. Chapter 41

Skye knocked on the motel room door. There was a pause, and then Mike opened the door.

“Watch the cats,” he said, nodding towards the floor.

Skye stepped in quickly, being careful to avoid the kittens that were milling around the room. James and Akela were sitting in mismatched chairs next to a desk that had been pulled away from the wall. Mike sat down on the foot of the bed. Ninochka lifted her head from where she was curled up in James’ lap and thumped her tail against his leg.

“Hi, sorry I’m late,” said Skye.

Akela shrugged. “So’s Jeff.”

“Also wow, two whole chairs? This is a fancier motel than I thought,” said Skye.

“We borrowed one from next door,” said Akela, grinning.

“ _They_ ‘borrowed’ the chair, not me,” said Mike, pointing emphatically at James and Akela. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“That’s because you didn’t have the forethought to bring the necessary tools with you,” said James.

“That’s because I’m a _law-abiding citizen_ when I don’t have a bomb in my eye,” said Mike.

“Or a bastardized superserum altering your brain chemistry.” Skye kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed next to Mike. A black kitten—Skye wasn’t sure if it was Yekaterina or Aloysius—jumped up on the bed and started investigating Skye’s lap.

“Anyway,” said Akela, shifting in her chair to face James. “I go through all that—four days of prep work and multiple hours of hassle during the heist—and _then_ it turns out the security system my handler was so focused on turning off was a bunch of ultrasonic motion sensors,” said Akela.

“Wait, _seriously_? You can get past those with a bed sheet,” said James. “Or by _moving really slowly_.”

“I _know_. But apparently my handler didn’t,” said Akela. “Or his handler didn’t. For all I know, he was getting his information in little pieces just like I was.”

The black kitten had apparently decided that laps were boring, because it was now trying to climb onto Skye’s shoulder.

“So this was…?” Skye started.

“One of the missions I did for Garrett. About a year ago,” said Akela. “Not the _worst_ misuse of compartmentalization I’ve encountered, but probably the most embarrassing if my handler ever found out about the bed sheet trick afterwards.”

“So…compartmentalization can work _against_ someone’s strategic goals?” said Skye.

Coulson had never mentioned that possibility.

“ _Oh_ yeah. You want stories? I have so many stories, and most of my friends are sick of hearing them,” said Akela.

* * *

Chang and Jepsen were working on paperwork when Chang suddenly straightened up, holding his finger to his earpiece. He stood up and walked across the room; Jepsen started shuffling through the papers in front of her, trying to find where she left her own earpiece.

“Oh,” said Chang, looking out the window. “This is not good.”

Jepsen got up and walked over to join him. A news van was parked outside, and another one was pulling up.

“Well, shit.”

* * *

“Soon as I get into the room, he tells me to ‘wait’ and then says ‘put on the infrared goggles’. So I do,” said Akela. “Then there’s a really long pause, and just as I’m starting to wonder if my handler left for a coffee break in the middle of a heist I don’t know how to finish, he sends another message saying to go ahead and walk to the end of the room.”

Akela glanced at her audience. Skye and James were listening attentively; Mike was checking his phone, because he’d already heard this one.

“I managed to take all of three steps before the alarm started blaring,” said Akela. “At which point my handler gives the _extremely_ useful order to ‘get out of there’.”

“Oh no!” said Skye, laughing.

James looked exasperated and indignant, and Akela wondered how many times he’d been screwed over by idiotic handlers.

“Getting out was…a whole thing.” Akela remembered the face of a guard who stopped moving after she slammed his head against the wall. “Anyway. My handler didn’t explain anything after the fact, but a week later I was sent back to do it over again—this time with a controlled-density mist dispenser.”

James looked at the ceiling and dragged his hands over his face, which Akela thought was a very gratifying reaction. Skye looked slightly confused.

“It’s designed to create a mist that’s just dense enough to reveal a laser grid, without setting it off,” said Akela, watching realization dawn on Skye’s face. “My handler was apparently smart enough to figure out that there were infrared lasers, but too stupid to remember that you can’t see most laser beams until they bounce off of something.”

“What, did he never play with a cat with a laser pointer?” said Skye.

“I don’t know, but I could have caught his mistake if he’d just bothered to brief me on my own damn mission,” said Akela.

“I don’t—I don’t remember stuff from before my last memory wipe, but there’s a _reason_ my user manual says to give me access to as much information as possible,” said James. “Handlers come up with plans like, ‘develop a cover story, forge an access card, and wear a disguise so you can walk in the front door and take the elevator’ when there’s a perfectly good window that leads right into the room you’re trying to get to.”

Akela laughed, trying not to think about whether she had a user manual too. “Yeah. Not sure if it’s because they spend too much time in an office instead of the field, or because they’re just stupid. Though windows are somewhat less useful when you need to get to a room in the middle of the forty-third floor or something.”

“Wait, why? I mean, you have to do a little more prep—look up what kind of flooring the hallways have so you know whether to bring a mop or a vacuum, maybe research which particular window on the forty-third floor is least likely to have people nearby—but then you just dress like a janitor and clean your way from the window to the destination.”

Akela wasn’t sure how to respond for a minute.

“Normal humans can’t free-climb forty-three stories,” she said.

“Oh,” said James.

There was an awkward pause.

“I’m working on writing an augmented reality app that will show people where the laser beams are, given the locations of the sensors as inputs,” said Skye.

James looked like he was about to respond, but then cut himself off and looked toward the hallway. Mike looked up and closed his eyes.

“Someone’s coming,” said Mike.

There was a knock on the door. Akela got up and checked the peephole; sure enough, it was Jeff. She let him in.

“Heyyyy, hope I didn’t keep you guys waiting too long,” he said. “I was aiming for fashionably late, of course, but then there was more traffic than I expected…”

Akela rolled her eyes at him, then glanced back at the room. Sometime in the last five seconds, James had gone completely still. As she walked back to her chair, Akela noted dilated pupils, flared nostrils, and fair skin turned even paler by vasoconstriction. _Oh good, this should be fun._

“We saved you the desk,” Akela said to Jeff, deliberately casual.

James watched Jeff like a hawk as he walked over to the desk.

“What, no chair?” said Jeff.

“If you wanted a chair, you should have shown up on time,” said Akela.

She glanced at James; still tense. Akela and Jeff had helped people who were traumatized by Hydra’s medical experimentation before, but it wasn’t her favorite thing to deal with. She’d planned to give Jeff and James some time to chat and get to know each other before getting to business, but it looked like it was too late for that to work now.

“So,” she said. “You brought the files?”

James nodded stiffly, and scooped his puppy up with one arm so he could walk over to the dresser and retrieve his bag. Akela’d had to tell him to put it up on the dresser instead of leaving it on the carpeted floor—which made her wonder if generations of Hydra agents had been stuck dealing with the Winter Soldier’s bedbug-infested gear after he was put back in cryo. James pulled a stack of files out of the bag and handed them to Akela. She spread the files across her lap; some of them looked relatively new, while others were decades-old. Jeff grabbed one of the newer files.

“Okay, let’s see what we have to work with,” he said, opening the folder. “… _wow_ that’s a lot of stuff to work with.”

* * *

Steve stepped out of his apartment to find Agent Jepsen waiting for him.

“We have a situation,” she said.

Steve nodded for her to continue.

“There’s a crowd of reporters outside. Cameras, everything. We’re still investigating how your location got leaked.”

“Ah. My _favorite_ type of surprise mission,” said Steve. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I’m getting out of the building without being seen?”

* * *

“Okay, hold on, are you going to be able to disarm this many devices in one go?” said Akela’s friend Jeff. “Because we’ve never dealt with a _backup_ lethal implant before, let alone _five_ , and we need to factor in extra time for all the complications that will inevitably arise.”

James had started out desperately wanting to be anywhere else, but now was able to disinterestedly listen to the discussion of how the surgeon planned to go about cutting him open.

“Hang on, I need to think about this,” said Akela, frowning at the list of implants.

Jeff turned to James. “Ideally, for people in your situation, we like to put you under and then disarm and remove everything all at once, so you can stay unconscious for the whole procedure—”

“That’s a terrible idea,” James watched himself say. “If I’m conscious and in pain, I can tell you to use more local anesthetic; if I’m half-conscious and in pain, I might lash out before I remember where I am.”

Jeff looked taken aback; everyone else in the room stopped what they were doing to look at James. Despite not remembering any specific incidents, James had the gut-deep certainty that he would be in trouble right now if this were Hydra.

“Ohhhhkay, note to self, step _away_ from the operating table after finishing up,” said Jeff.

“That doesn’t help you if I wake up before you finish,” said James.

“Um. The whole idea is that you _won’t_ wake up before we finish,” said Jeff. “You’ll need more anesthetic than a typical human, but these files have pretty detailed notes on how much to use.”

“Really? Because I distinctly remember Hydra having no idea what the hell they were doing.”

Skye was looking at James with a horrified expression. It occurred to him that watching himself handle the conversation on autopilot might not be the best plan if his autopilot for dealing with doctors was broken.

It occurred to him that he had no idea how to switch off autopilot.

“Jeff, is there any super important reason not to use local instead of general anesthesia?” said Akela.

“I mean, he’ll be awake the whole time, and he’ll have to be careful not to move. We can do it though,” said Jeff.

* * *

Steve stepped outside and the gaggle of reporters started a barrage of questions.

“Why leak all the documents?”

“Was that Romanov’s idea?”

“What happened with the Winter Soldier?”

“What do you have to say about accidentally working for Hydra?”

“Now that the truth about the Black Widow has been revealed, do you regret working with her?”

“Did you kill the Winter Soldier or did he get away?”

“What are you going to do about Hydra?”

“Are the Avengers going to reassemble?”

“What can you tell us about the Winter Soldier?”

Steve held up his hand for silence. He pointed to the reporter who asked the question he felt like answering first.

* * *

“Okay, we’re taking a break,” said Akela.

Mike and Skye exchanged relieved glances. Mike hadn’t exactly been surprised to find out that James had memories of waking up during surgery—the same thing had happened to one of the other Centipede soldiers—but it couldn’t be easy for James to discuss setting up more surgery, especially when he had no way of knowing how competent Jeff was.

_And he’s getting crabbier by the minute._

The silence was starting to stretch out awkwardly, so Mike turned on the TV and started flipping through channels, pausing when Captain America’s face appeared. _Wait a minute, I don’t recognize this footage…_

“We’re here live with Captain America, who’s appearing publicly for the first time since the fall of SHIELD…” said a woman holding a microphone and talking to the camera.

Mike glanced around the room; Cap had apparently caught everyone’s attention. _Including—oh no._

James—the _Winter Soldier_ —was riveted to the screen, staring with ominous intensity. Mike started running through everything he’d read about brainwashing and how it worked, and realized that he knew very little about the possible aftereffects. _How does that—is it like a rubber band that completely snaps if you pull it too far? Or is it something he bent out of shape enough to get some wiggle room, but never actually got rid of?_

Mike’s thoughts were cut short by James dashing out of the room.

In a split second, Mike weighed his chances—the Winter Soldier was stronger, faster, and more durable than any of Hydra’s other supersoldiers, and unlike Mike had actual combat training—and ran after James anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ultrasonic motion sensors actually can be beaten by holding up a bedsheet or by moving slowly enough--which is why most security professionals don't consider them to be very secure. For anyone who's interested, there's more information in this article:   
> http://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/79070-mythbusters-are-busted-1
> 
> "Controlled-density mist dispenser" is just some technobabble I made up. 
> 
> Augmented reality refers to adding virtual elements to a video in real time so that they look like they've been placed in reality. So, for instance, you could hold up your phone to see a version of what's in front of you that has extra stuff added--furniture you're thinking of adding to a room, Hollywood-style visible laser beams superimposed over the actual laser beams, Pokemon added to the scenery, etc.   
> The app that Skye describes would only be useful in situations where the users have detailed intelligence on the security system they're trying to get past, but it once she has it working she can go look at SHIELD's assorted gadgets to see if one of them can be used to find laser emitters and detectors, in which case she can use the augmented reality code she already wrote as a component in a more complicated app that finds previously unknown laser grids and shows them to the user.


End file.
